Beyond Minimal Alt Text: Pros and Cons

Overcoming the Cons: Screen Reader Capabilities

Enhancing User Control with Skippable Verbose Alt Text

User Empowerment through Skippable Alt Text

• Screen readers allow users to skip long alt text, giving control over how much detail they consume.
• Providing essential information up front in alt text ensures that it’s available for all even if some skip the remaining text.
• This approach respects diverse user preferences and cognitive load management strategies.
• Clear structuring and front-loading key information enhance usability and make skipping more effective.

Front-Loading Alt Text: Pros and Cons

Overcoming the Cons: Ethical AI can help

AI for Alt Text: A bit of a mixed bag

The wrong way to use AI for alt text: automatic generators

Shopify "Magic" Alt Text Issues

• The AI doesn’t know which aspects of the image to include
• The AI gives a single option
• The AI doesn’t follow length recommendations
• The AI doesn’t prioritize the most salient feature of the image (front loading) because it can’t know what it is
• The AI usually has no context

Challenges to Effective AI Alt

(and how AI in a WordPress plugin can overcome them)

Challenge: Poor Training Data

The core limitation of historical AI alt text

AI alt text generation ability has historically only been as good as its training data (which was pretty poor). There’s a ton of lazy, sloppy, misguided alt out there (filenames, SEO keywords, unnecessary words, etc), meaning AI often replicates these exact mistakes when generating new descriptions.

Solution: Keep it Honest

Continually feed instructions to the AI

A plugin can feed consistent instructions to the AI on how to avoid the pitfalls the training data may contain. By establishing structured boundaries, we ensure the generative process remains accurate, preventing the replication of lazy, sloppy, or misguided alt text patterns commonly found in historical datasets.

“Hey Polly!” The inception of a human-in-the-loop Alt-text WordPress Plugin

Problem: Generation in a Vacuum

AI-generated alt text misses crucial context

AI-generated alt text may sometimes miss contextual subtleties important to users. Usually, the AI doesn’t have access to the surrounding page context, meaning it is forced to generate alternative descriptions entirely in a vacuum. Without reference to the surrounding paragraphs, template structures, or intent, even high-quality visual outputs fail to produce useful digital accessibility.

Solution with Ethical AI: Context is King

Giving Polly Context

At the point of insertion (Gutenberg, Elementor, Classic Editor) it’s easy for Polly to grab the context of the surrounding paragraphs and feed that along with the image and instructions to the model:

“At least the first variation should connect what's visible in the image and what the surrounding text is about.”
“If the image relates to the surrounding text, that connection belongs ONLY in the 'explanation' field.”

Challenge: Every Usage Is Different

A challenge with alt text in WordPress generally is that the alt attribute of an image is singular whereas an image may be used in a variety of posts or pages, with a variety of different contexts, so should really have a variety of different alts. Most AI alt generators are unaware of context, so wouldn’t provide more than one alt, even if WordPress would allow them to.

Solution: Plugin propagates Page-Specific Alt

Give AI the context of images from various pages, then have plugin rewrite default tags to replace global alt attributes with specific ones.

Giving Polly Context (Code Implementation)

Polly writes the page-specific alt the user chooses directly into the page by rewriting the default alt:

$img_tag = $img_match[0];  
$new_tag = preg_match( '/\salt="[^"]*"/', $img_tag )  
     ? preg_replace( '/\salt="[^"]*"/', ' alt="' . esc_attr( $alt_text ) . '"', $img_tag, 1 )  
     : preg_replace( '/<img/', '<img alt="' . esc_attr( $alt_text ) . '"', $img_tag, 1 );

Managing Multiple Image Instances

For images used on multiple pages, choose which specific instance or global setting you want to add alt text to.

Challenge: Links Need Special Treatment

Image-links need a special type of alt indicating where the images lead to rather than just visual appearance.

Solution: Instance Detection

If a plugin can edit alt per instance, and detect its context, it can easily suggest and set a different appropriate alt for an image-link, writing it into the markup of the page directly.

Links at Point of Insertion

At the point of insertion, notifications inform editors when a different kind of alt text is needed for links, and gives them choices to meet that need.

Links from the Media Library

From the Media Library, after selecting the instance, instructions indicate what kind of link alt text is required.

Solutions to the Effective AI Alt

(and how AI in a WordPress plugin facilitates them)

Challenge: Over-Reliance on AI

Over-reliance can lead to decreased quality

• Reduce human oversight and editorial judgment.
• Miss important nuances
• Diminish accessibility quality and user experience.

Solution: Benevolent Friction

Polly’s Squawk

const modal = document.createElement('div');  
modal.id = 'polly-enforcement-modal';  
modal.className = 'polly-modal-alert';  
modal.innerHTML = `<h3 id="polly-alert-heading">🦜 Just a moment, Captain!</h3>`;

Benevolent Friction: Forcing a Choice

You, the human, can choose to do the wrong thing, but not without thinking about it, and Polly’s there to help you do the right thing

Other Squawks

Polly’s Power of Annoyance

If you choose to not add alt, Polly squawks and squawks and squawks! Eventually, it’s just easier to add it…

Polly forces oversight without even trying

Polly gives 3+ choices of alt, essentially requiring human oversight. Choices each have a different focus

“Generate exactly ${config.choiceCount} distinct alt text variations following these rules: 
            Write in plain language, present tense, active voice, include only what is visible — no interpretation or assumptions Each variation must foreground a DIFFERENT visible subject or element from the image as its opening focus. The thing named first in the alt text should differ across all variations.” 

Benevolent Friction: Forcing a Choice

Overcoming the challenges of AI generation in a Wordpress Plugin

Challenge:

AI alt text generation ability has historically only been as good as its training data (which was pretty poor)

There’s a ton of lazy, sloppy, misguided alt out there (filenames, SEO keywords, unnecessary words, etc)

Solution:

Continually feed instructions to the AI to keep it honest

A plugin can feed consistent instructions to the AI on how to avoid the pitfalls the training data may contain

Challenge:

AI-generated alt text may sometimes miss contextual subtleties important to users.

Usually the AI doesn’t have access to the context, so it’s generating the alt in a vacuum

Solution:

Give AI the context of the images (page, post, template, or block)

Easy to pull paragraph context from within Gutenberg or Elementor when about to insert the image, and possible to search the database to find where image is used and its context

Challenge:

Risk of over-reliance on AI could reduce human oversight and editorial judgment.

Over-dependence on AI may cause important nuances to be missed, diminishing accessibility quality and user experience.

Solution:

Benevolent friction rather than prioritizing easy

Just have to make doing the right thing (providing the oversight in the creation of alt text) easier than avoiding doing it. This is actually pretty easy at the point of insertion.

Contact (and get involved!)

Deneb Pulsipher
Captain Accessible at SeaMonster Studios
deneb@seamonsterstudios.com

Polly Alt Plugin: https://wordpress.org/plugins/polly-alt/

GitHub repo: github.com/SeamonsterDeneb/Polly-Alt/