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As a disabled web accessibility practitioner. This pisses me off. Extremely.
GENERATIVE AI DOES NOT AND CANNOT EVER REPRESENT DISABLED PEOPLE.
Just fucking hire disabled people like me who know what they're doing.
Believing AI over disabled people is ABLEISM and DEHUMANIZING. For fucks sake.
@ashleemboyer “bring… to life” this is so sharkjump’ed
@joelmeador makes my skin crawl. Like am I not alive already?? What the fuck does an AI know about it.
@ashleemboyer it knows nothing but can parrot the most mediocre average opinion ingested. Gonna guess when it comes to accessibility the content is not going to be inclusive or worth reading
@ashleemboyer Well that can get in the bin.
@ashleemboyer "storytelling capabilities of genAI"? Why not just ask those impacted right?
@ashleemboyer
But they'd have to pay you. You don't have to pay a Generative Algorithm like that.
They might pay 'for' use of the thing, but it's 'cheaper' than paying a flesh and blood human.
@ashleemboyer
I don't know man, nothing says "accessibility" to me quite like leet speek. I love the idea of running an accessibility company whose name a screen reader, um, can't.
@RnDanger @ashleemboyer Not leet, it’s a fairly common numeronym: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numeronym?wprov=sfti1#Numerical_contractions
@RnDanger @ashleemboyer @kfet I dare say that a ‘fairly common numeronym’ is still obscure to the point of illegibility. It’s not helpful, it’s just sales wank that you pitch to investors.
@Kestenan @RnDanger @ashleemboyer The numeronym use is really not the issue here.
@kfet @Kestenan @ashleemboyer
I am reticent to say this but I am not sure how this is a system that could be useful. I'm sure there must be other words that have the same number of letters with the same first and last letter.
It feels more like a cute marketing trick than a common means of communication.
@RnDanger @Kestenan @ashleemboyer But it actually is a really common and accepted means to abbreviate certain long words. Internationalization and localization being the most common.
These are great for when you want to use them when building the software tools which do the work.
Sounds like developers like these things for convenience, but to me they look like obscured words. Has anyone asked people who would be using this software how they feel?
This is my writeup and thoughts:
https://ashleemboyer.com/blog/what-the-heck-is-web-a11y
When I'm speaking, I say accessibility. When I'm typing in chats or social posts I often use a11y since it's easier for me to type and helps stay under character limits.
It's not a marketing trick at its core even if people try to use it that way. It's just an abbreviation and gets used by more than developers in digital product building settings.
@kfet @RnDanger @ashleemboyer I understand that is not an issue for you, but it is for me. I see the name as indicative of the company’s character it as a company trying to promote itself as an accessibility consultant, but is not making accessibility is top priority. I suspect they are merely trying to profit from genAI and exploiting accessibility as a USP.
Though I am interesting in knowing what the issue here is, from your point of view.
@Kestenan @RnDanger @ashleemboyer I think the issue is it’s all in really poor taste, insulting to the actual accessibility specialists.
I don’t think they stand to do any profit with this experiment.
@kfet @Kestenan @ashleemboyer
What is your stake in this?
@RnDanger @Kestenan @ashleemboyer I’m just having my coffee, going through my socials…
@kfet @Kestenan @ashleemboyer
I'm not a user of accessibility products so i try not to comment on things i don't know. I'm curious if you use these products and may be affected by their function. Perhaps you have an understanding i lack
@RnDanger @Kestenan @ashleemboyer I have built pipelines which prevent broken code reaching production. E.g. somebody makes a change to a website code, which makes it inaccessible due to common mistakes (like missing image alt text) - they get an error and need to correct it before it goes out.
@RnDanger @Kestenan @ashleemboyer We actually had a deaf person consulting the team, I learned a lot on that project.
@Kestenan @RnDanger @ashleemboyer I think the tool name is a good choice, but I wish it were used to promote something useful.
@RnDanger @kfet @ashleemboyer I agree that I don’t think they’ll realise a profit, but I suspect they think they will :P
Yep this is what it comes down to.
An AI doesn't know anything about disability or accessibility. Disabled people are the experts. Especially disabled people who work in accessibility.
There's no reason to use AI to our jobs unless people don't want to pay us for our expertise.
Also important to consider how little disabled people are believed about their experiences. To trust an AI over real humans is a huge problem.
@RnDanger just re-read your reply, and "leet speak" didn't register! "a11y" is actually a numeronym that's short for "accessibility".
Just uploaded a quick video on it if that format's helpful!
https://mstdn.social/@ashleemboyer/113573380972162443
It references my blog post:
https://ashleemboyer.com/blog/what-the-heck-is-web-a11y
@ashleemboyer@mstdn.social "ah yes, I want the factually inept toddler trapped in software to teach me about human compassion and supporting the disabled" - average AI company
it's really not hard to just give a real person your software and ask them how to improve accessibility, seriously wtf
@froge @ashleemboyer yeah but then they would have to listen to people who probably are already a bit angry with them if accessibility is such an afterthought. Also, less risk of the AI suing them for calling it unacceptable names when it points out a UI design error that will take a lot of work to fix.
@ashleemboyer @cstross 100%!
I do not consider myself “disabled”, per se (just colourblind), but UI design decisions frequently seriously impact my ability to use a website or piece of software.
Just get it reviewed by ppl with disabilities, and listen to the feedback, ffs 
@WiteWulf @ashleemboyer @cstross you remind me of when I was teaching at an FE college and had to attend an "awareness" workshop and the ruddy lecturer had made slides with red headlines on an identical-saturation blue background, and not as a "what not to do" demo. My eyes just streamed, as that's how they react to trying to read low-contrast text, and everyone's like "WTF?" Yeah, they didn't realise they had one of us among the teachers. Great awareness, folks(!)
@ashleemboyer able-AI-sm... that's quite next level lack of empathy
@ashleemboyer ffs. ai need to stop.
@ashleemboyer all marketing goons who use the phrase “storytelling” unironically deserve tinnitus
Hiring and accommodating disabled individuals would mean this company actually cares about them.
Far easier for tech bros to make a quick buck off of the LLM bubble this way than to actually solve problems.
@ashleemboyer can't emphasize this enough (as said above), fucking just hire disabled people!
@ashleemboyer
"a11y"
Fucks sake
@ashleemboyer lol so do I get this right, you're supposed give the ai bot a URL and then it pretends to be a disabled person visiting your website, and you pay them money for that?
@guenther under the hood, they're running automated accessibility tests. Then they're using AI to "translate" the test results into "normal" language.
@ashleemboyer lol, machine-unreadability as a service. that's somehow even dumber.
@ashleemboyer how is it "explained by those impacted" if the explainer is an AI
Like, what the actual fuck?
@masukomi @ashleemboyer "ah yes, the best way to hear firsthand accounts of accessibility issues is to ask The Lying Machine, finding actual disabled people is Too Hard"
fucking techbro brainrot
@LexYeen @ashleemboyer “ fucking techbro brainrot” is my new favorite phrase for anything AI related
@ashleemboyer what pisses me off us people who think some bs AI tool will solve accessibility. FFS just dont make shitty react apps that are completely inaccessible.
@ashleemboyer AI is definitionally "without us."
@ashleemboyer I what .. why do you need some fucking AI to tell you what living with disabilities is like when
- that’s broad as hell there’s lots of disabilities and they effect people completely differently,
- disabled people are right fucking there for you to talk to, go outside, say hi ..
@ashleemboyer@mstdn.social Dehumanization is the point, I think.
@ashleemboyer there needs to be a hall of fame for tech guys missing the point
Ⓥ @ashleemboyer@mstdn.social i have a question that always was in my mind, wich I wanted to ask an impacted person. Maybe you would like to answet it.
There is an alt text bot wich I find very usefull. It describes ppictures in more detail than I could for every post and if it does some shit, I just add something useful to the alt text myself. What do you think of such solutions and have you heard of such a bot?
Fiona 
@sakura @ashleemboyer Not impacted myself, but I recently had a discussion with @kc who is and has been a very outspoken critic of these solutions (a lot of her posts are in German, but not this discussion, though sadly it lacks some of the background, but maybe Casey can point you at something for that): https://tech.lgbt/@Fiona/113505506748476828
@sakura Here's alt text for the image:
A light golden-colored puppy is lying in the sand at the beach, partially buried. Its face is resting on the sand, and it appears relaxed or sleeping.
@sakura Here's an alt-text description for the image:
A person's hand holds a dark-colored, disposable coffee cup with a simple, light-colored "I" logo. The cup is positioned near a train window, through which a sunny, rural landscape is visible. A small, circular sticker on the window depicts two figures with a heart between them, suggesting a social distancing or passenger advisory.
@sakura Here's alt text for the image:
A hazy, golden-hour view of an industrial area. Smoke billows from a factory chimney, contrasting with several wind turbines in the distance. Rolling hills covered in trees and a body of water are visible in the foreground.
@sakura Here's alt text for the image:
A stunning image of a star cluster, densely packed with numerous stars of varying brightness and color. Bright, prominent stars are surrounded by a multitude of fainter stars, creating a dazzling display against a dark background of space. There's a reddish nebula-like feature visible within the cluster, adding to its complexity. The overall effect is one of immense scale and cosmic beauty.
@Fiona@tech.lgbt @ashleemboyer@mstdn.social @kc@chaos.social @altbot@fuzzies.wtf so in my unexpert opinion these alt texts are a great start. For the industrial hazy image I would add that it is a birds eye view and maybe that there are many green trees visible. I like the other ones, especially the star one. The dog also could be described as beeing happy, because he is playing in the sand and that it is a young dog.
There are some challenges to the bot, because the alt text is not integrated in the picture as usual, but that would be doable.
@altbot @sakura @Fiona @ashleemboyer I'm not going to point out all the inaccuracies in these AI descriptions, but each of them contains some major ones a human would never describe that way. Also, people generally don't edit AI generated content even if they say so, as that *magically* takes away all any and all claimed time savings, while introducing more error.
@altbot @sakura @ashleemboyer @Fiona This tech mustn't be used when sharing content. Instead, it would be better to put it in the hands of the receiving end, where users can control outputs, know that it might be inaccurate, and learn typical mistakes of their preferred models.