cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45437770
I've been thinking a lot about the Fediverse ALT issue.
Some people are annoyed by posts without Alttext, & others get reminded¹ to add it.
The core question is: How can we improve accessibility?
Proposal: ☑️ Add a user filter to hide media posts without AltTag ☑️ Reduced engagement on hidden posts would encourage adding Alt text ☑️ People who need accessibility wouldn't have to encounter unlabeled media
If this gets traction, I'll open a Mastodon GitHub issue (maybe on others too?).
These days, it would probably be more effective to make it easy for instance operators hook up a local multi modal llm to the server to auto generate alt text for all images posted on their instance. I'd happily donate to cover the infrastructure costs for any instance owner who was doing that
While I understand the potential value of that, it is worth also acknowledging that ai will never understand the human, social, contextual meaning of things its providing alt text for, and theres a fair argument to be made that folks with disabilities deserve those things
Id welcome perspectives from folks with relevant disabilities who use or depend on alt text :)
‘iPhone Magnifier and Voice over’
I don't hear her complaining.
Definitely more effective than every disabled person etc. having to generate it! Have you seen the Mastodon image text to alt text feature? I guess they could simply expand on that?
I thought we were anti AI...?
Take a look at how blind people can use phones to learn what's around them, and tell me afterwards that you're still against AI.
It's a polarised topic but doesn't need to be, IMO - I still see it as a tool, albeit a powerful one with lots of risks and drawbacks, but the cats out of the bag at this point so we may as well roll with it and make the most of the applications for good. Like with many other massive, rapid technical advancements of the past.
AI is quite unlike other "rapid technical advancements of the past" in that sense. It's so damaging to people, society and environment that there is currently no possibility that any use you make of it, "well-intentioned" or not, can improve things. Any "we might as well use it" s little more than joining the oppression.
I replied to you with an example of AI recognizing things that the phone camera sees, to tell the blind user about them. That reply was before this comment of yours. I myself am also a person using auto-generated subtitles on YouTube, because my hearing isn't too good, especially for the non-native English language.
Yet you claim that none of these uses improve things. So you see less-able people as unworthy of improvements to their lives. Nice to know, because an opinion stemming from bigotry can be summarily dismissed.
Imagine thinking that LLMs are so toxic that you'd think we're splitting the atom, a technology so polarizing that it became a security issue. Any yet, nuclear power is an incredible scientific achievement, and something we still use all over the place. But, it's also a technology that we still aren't fully utilizing 80 years later, because of fearmongers like you taking away any sense of nuance in the conversation, and letting blind absolutism govern your opinions.