normy foxyoreosMar 10

RE: https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/116206874904164848

I always bring up auto-captioning as a (non-LLM) technology that is probably a net-win for accessibility, but that still led to Youtube ending up with *WORSE* closed captioning, because as soon as they got machine transcription, they dropped community transcription options.

Machine transcription on Youtube led to a local maximum where community options that often resulted in better transcriptions are now unavailable and everything is kind of meh.

Show threadnormy foxyoreosMar 10

I have also mildly criticized Mastodon over this with its AI alt text features. They're not an LLM, and they're probably good for accessibility, but their existence has hobbled alt text on the platform.

We could have better community alt text controls on Mastodon, and I think part of the reason we don't is because of a mentality that accessibility is just like a chore we have to solve.

And I think the AI stuff helps reinforce that, a bit.

Show threadnormy foxyoreosMar 10

I don't want the OCR stuff removed! But I do think that like.. there's a warning here, and it comes up every time we try to automate accessibility.

Accessibility is a community effort, and tools that can alleviate the burden are helpful, but are not a substitute for human interaction and effort.

And many accessibility spaces are under-developed *because of these tools*. We could have a "boost with alt text" option on Mastodon.

Show threadnormy foxyoreosMar 10

We could have official ways (not just replies/comments) to suggest and accept alt text from community members with the press of a button.

But where LLMs are concerned, I see the same thing playing out in that space. I have seen LLM evangelists argue that this is blind accessibility, that this is helping non-English community members, and like.. on the edges, sure! I guess?

But...

Show threadnormy foxyoreos

I also see a lot of members of those communities saying that things are getting worse. That blind accessibility has not gotten better with the rise of LLMs. That the net effect of these tools is a *less* accessible Internet.

And that is very plausible to me, I believe that, because I've seen it play out before with technology that isn't even as harmful as LLMs are.

Like, who could object to AI voice transcription? And yet, the result isn't simply good.

Mar 10 at 9:39pmWeb