Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an important part of the modern life. It is no longer simply the stuff of sci-fi movies and books. While definitely smart cars, smart homes, and varying other advances are pretty popular, AI developments do much more than that. It has emerged as an instrumental tool for removing web accessibility barriers. Companies like AccessiBe are particularly popular for using AI powered solutions to make websites accessible for people with disability.
AccessiBe briefly talks about the use of AI in web accessibility
Web accessibility implies to the practice of making sure that all online content, starting from videos and images, to audio files and articles, is free from barriers that prevent people with disabilities from navigating and exploring the site. Web content must be effectively compatible with screen readers and other assistive technologies. All sites should also be fully navigable via keyboard. Traditionally, web accessibility has been a major source of frustration for web developers, brands, and disabled online users. Disabled people faced a lot of issues in navigating online content as a large amount of it was not properly accessible to them. On the other hand, it used to be expensive and tiresome for brands and developers to achieve full accessibility. But times have changed considerably. Now companies like AccessiBe offered a range of AI based solutions through which it becomes simple to make websites accessible, without going over the budget. This company has catered to businesses of all sizes over the years.
A lot of times, business owners do not even realize that their website is not accessible. Fortunately, AI enabled automated accessibility checker can be used to analyze a website and check whether it is accessible or not. Certain accessibility tools even scan, diagnose, and rectify accessibility errors in a website automatically.
AI especially plays a key role in improving web accessibility for people with motor and vision disabilities. In case a person has just one free hand or a vision impairment, then using a mouse to search the web, and then entering long passwords can be extremely difficult for them. In such situations, facial recognition technology facilitated by AI present in smartphones and laptops significantly aids in doing away with the need to type any such passwords. Many websites and apps even allow facial recognition technology to be used as an alternative to CAPACHA. AI can even be used to examine, recognize and describe images to people who depend on a screen reader to navigate a website.
Automated Speech Recognition (ASR) algorithms are used popularly today to help people who are deaf or hard of hearing to interact with video content. Owing to this technology, content creators do not have to deal with the task of entering captions themselves manually. Rather, the ASR algorithm shall input captions automatically, without the need for any such user input. ASR solutions actually have the capability to caption video content in real-time, which makes live streams available to people with disabilities. One can explore the web to gain a better understanding of how AI can help in improving web accessibility.
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