Notices by Hannah Kolbeck 🏳️‍⚧️ (hannah@social.alt-text.org)

This coming Friday, July 26th, is the one year birthday of a major accessibility issue in documentation for website developers being pointed out, and little has been done.

Let's put it to bed without birthday cake.

Brain cancer has removed my ability to help, but I hope it's possible. If you've written HTML or CSS take the time to read over the issue, this is important.

Boosts appreciated 💜

https://github.com/orgs/mdn/discussions/430

I've been working on this for a while and improved some things yesterday. https://2d-ocr.glitch.me takes an image with text in chunks and extracts them into an HTML table. More work needed on accessibility.

Still some issues such as with text grouping on more complex images that have possible solutions but probably beyond my focus. Also an issue is the use of Google's OCR API which was the only tool I could find a few years ago making this possible, local/free libraries might now be available.

@paper @sasha92 @mozilla I want to say explicitly that I don't fully agree w/ @hipsterelectron here, but I think that your dismissal of their concerns also substantially misses the mark

I've also talked at length about fine details that assist the Blind folks @weirdwriter talks about in using AI above while not incurring discussed harm. Making it easy for a screen reader user to knowingly get an AI description is relatively simple and worthwhile, but giving that tool to writers needs great care

@sun @0x5DA @mozilla I misunderstood their plans, and have written a partial retraction: https://social.alt-text.org/@hannah/112570794161740101

@sun @0x5DA @mozilla That is true of the first steps here, however if you read the linked blog post you will find that extending easy use to publishers is a goal.

@mozilla I've been working on tools around issues like this for years, including a large amount of communication with folks who depend on alt text. Should this technology be available to those writing alt text, rather than just voluntarily to screen reader users, it will be immensely harmful to the accessibility of social media everywhere. Please do not do this. I'm happy to dive into why but please do not make it easy for people posting images to use this AI generation.
- Founder, Alt-Text.org

@0x5DA @mozilla I don't have capacity in this moment for the full depth, but it's a bit more complex. Writing alt text that's actually equalizing of access, especially on social media, requires knowledge of multiple layers of context in which an image appears. Similar to other AI types, AI description works impressively *sometimes* but falls down hard on many types of image commonly appearing on SM, often in ways not obviously bad to those writing alt text.

An example: https://bsky.app/profile/hannah.the-void.social/post/3ktzlwoqdkc2h

@0x5DA @mozilla It can be useful for a person using a screen reader to have access to an AI description, but crucial there is that said user needs to know that that's the source of said description. There are repeated patterns of those who feel pressured to include descriptions but don't actually care about accessibility doing the absolute minimum, manifesting here as using the direct AI output without examination or editing.

So yes, a lack of inline alt text is better than AI gen inline.

I built possibly the earliest same-tab tool for getting AI image descriptions in Aug 2022, using a then newly updated Microsoft AI API. I listened to Disabled folks about it. I've payed close attention to the subject since.

My criticisms of @mozilla plans for Firefox built in AI alt text generation aren't because of knee-jerk AI hatred or some ignorance. They are because I understand this to a breadth and depth extremely rare and I want acknowledgement of major issues being ignored 🧵…

Boost? 💜

I posted about brain cancer and hope to find people to pick up the torch on my accessibility projects that I think could help make the web better. I have a major surgery May 29th and time is short. I will only become less able.

Summaries and links can be found here: https://github.com/alt-text-org/in-need-of-adoption

I'm happy to answer any questions, or just discuss things, but I do ask that kind words on cancer not be posted here, despite my appreciation for them.

Boosts and sharing elsewhere appreciated.

💜 Hannah

Hi friends,

The http://alt-text.org alt text library project needs a new leader, because I have brain cancer.

I would like to connect with the #accessibility dev community, something I have never figured out, probably in part for neurodivergence reasons. I want to hand the project off to a team or a leader if anyone is willing to take it over.

Github: https://github.com/alt-text-org
WIP MVP: a site designed for writing alt text with a private library: https://my.alt-text.org

Boosts appreciated

@aral @alt_text That's my hope as well, though the next steps are browser extensions in that area to allow you to carry your archive with you around the web.

I'm happy to announce the alpha release of https://my-alt-text-org.glitch.me/

It's a composer built for writing #AltText, with a number of features still to come. Highlights of the alpha release:

- An archive of everything you've composed with it, searchable by text or image
- OCR with 100+ languages supported
- Text splitting

I don't have the skills to make it #accessible. If you'd like to help with that or more generally there's a link to the GitHub on the page

#A11y #disability

cc: @DemocracySpot

@aral @alt_text Howdy, I'm working on building the alt text composer I wish social media had. I thought you might be interested given this post, and thanks for your advocacy. More details here: https://social.alt-text.org/@hannah/110759683285054347

I'm happy to announce the alpha release of https://my-alt-text-org.glitch.me/

It's a composer built for writing alt text, with a number of features still to come. Highlights of the alpha release:

- An archive of everything you've composed with it, searchable by text or image
- OCR with 100+ languages supported
- Text splitting

I don't have the skills to make it accessible. If you'd like to help with that or more generally there's a link to the GitHub on the page.

Try it out. Let me know what you think.

Hello, I'm here to seek out a community of other #Disabled people and accomplices.

I'm working to build a non-profit tool to make alt text easier, and I want to connect with folks who can help guide that project toward a useful start.

I've built a proof of concept, but getting it further will take building community. I'm #Autistic, and networking does not come easy to me. Boosting this is an immense help.

More information at https://alt-text.org