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• Post #2941707

  @sun @0x5DA@fosstodon.org @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.

• Post #2941706

  @jcsteh I recall seeing a direct mention that providing it to those writing alt text on sites was planned, but not finding it now I'll make no claims as to its author being official. I have seen a pretty universal perception that this feature will be offered thus in the future, and believe that it is irresponsible to not address that celebration with some acknowledgement that doing so takes immense care.

• Post #2941705

  @jcsteh I think that having such descriptions easily fetchable via screen readers is quite valuable and making it fairly universal would take relatively little effort and be low risk. Should that be in progress, I see using an equivalently generated description in the page alt text as adding nothing while likely to be abused based on my extensive experience with similar till usage on social media.

• Post #2941704

  @jcsteh that is so appreciated. I had a major brain surgery a week ago and have been spending a lot of energy on this because I had the perception that this was on the road map and saw little understanding of potential issues or willingness to listen when I tried to explain those issues or when folks relying on alt text raised alarms. I should really sleep, but I'm happy to chat more later and if anyone internal would like to speak I can be reached at hannah@alt-text.org

• Post #2941703

  @jcsteh I am glad to hear that other use is not being pursued right now and hope that this functionality is never provided to general browser users, rather than just by user-selected extension, until that tool's results can be assessed by Visually Impaired folks for images representing the spread likely to have the tool used for them I believe the only current AI capable of good such use is Google's, and via a small specialized API. I'm working on a proof of concept tool...

• Post #2941702

  Important partial retraction: I thank @jcsteh for the correction on the @mozilla image description AI plans criticized by me in these last few days. I and many others, most of whom I saw celebrating, believed that those plans included providing such tools to all users writing alt text in the web browser. They don't. I retract my criticism of Mozilla, because they are already doing what I was asking. I maintain my criticism of alt writer AI tools, and I think Jamie has validated my c...

• Post #2941701

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

• Post #2941700

  @jcsteh unrelated but I also wanted to link a discussion of a project under the Mozilla umbrella that I think is worth drawing your attention to if you're willing and able to share it where you think could be useful. Doing new to me frontend work I used the popular https://developer.mozilla.org HTML and CSS docs and noticed a pattern that could impact accessibility results. The below discussion came to an agreed upon high level plan, but cancer has made me unable to enact it. https://g...

• Post #2941699

  People considering themselves accessibility advocates are working to spread the usage of AI for writing alt text, especially on social media intentionally or not. I have seen that I understand the issues with AI here much more deeply than most and want to create a relatively short writeup that hopefully gives them pause My brain cancer has removed my ability to write organized text and I hope to find a Visually Impaired co-author with their own words. Please DM or email hannah@alt-text.org

• Post #2941698

  I'm happy to report that work on this issue with accessibility in the most prominent community documentation on HTML/CSS seems have started to get rolling, additional help or input certainly welcome. Right now accessibility documentation there; guidelines, warnings, and more; are not prominent and easy to miss. There's low hanging fruit and a broadly agreed upon path beyond that toward a more accessible web. https://github.com/orgs/mdn/discussions/430

• Post #2941697

  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 no...

• Post #2941696

  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

• Post #2941695

  My recovery from surgery has gone very well, and Scribely will be returning control of Alt-Text.org to me While I will soon be undergoing further treatment that will greatly impair my ability to lead, I have an incredible engineer that I really trust stepping up to do so I've built many proofs of concept and prototypes. I think it's time, and I'm ready, for something releasable To start with, in order to fix some issues alt-text.org and my.alt-text.org will be down for...

• Post #2941694

  @zkat Thank you, and I'm so glad you saw this. Reaching out to you has been on my to-do list for a bit, but it's rather long 💜

• Post #1600009

  Hi friends, The http://alt-text.org alt text library project needs a new leader, I have brain cancer. I built a working, scalable, proof of concept library of shared alt text with fuzzy matching. I'd like to connect with the #accessibility dev community. 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...