Here's why we need #AltText for profile pictures on the #fediverse!

The alleged Taika Waititi

"AI" alt text is notoriously unreliable and can't give context, so even when it isn't wrong, it's still not helpful: "Appears to be: Taika Waititi" makes no sense when my name is Laura and you don't know who Taika is or that my picture is from a TV show. If fedi had let *me* describe the pic, this wouldn't have been an issue, but as it is, @fastfinge was understandably confused!

Samuel Proulx (@fastfinge)

Iceshrimp.NET (fed.interfree.ca)

#accessibility

BeAware :fediverse:

@lowrah @fastfinge strange, I've never seen AI write a short thing like "appears to be ****" with no added context...every alt text I've ever added to an image here is AI and all of them have context.

Samuel Proulx

@BeAware @lowrah What model are you using? Alt text generation in edge and chrome use an extremely small one because they generate alt text for every image on a page in realtime as it loads.

BeAware :fediverse:

@fastfinge @lowrah I just use ChatGPT.

Samuel Proulx

@BeAware @lowrah That’d be why. ChatGPT is too slow and pricy for screen readers to use regularly. In fact, both Apple and Firefox use on device AI to generate missing alt text in the browser for screen readers.

BeAware :fediverse:

@fastfinge @lowrah and that'd be why the alt text is crap. It sucks that this is an example of "you get what you pay for" because I believe everyone should have the best accessibility regardless of price, but that's how it is unfortunately.