1. Home
  2. Vol 8, No 4 (2024)
  3. Acosta-Vargas

Generative Artificial Intelligence and Web Accessibility: Towards an Inclusive and Sustainable Future

Patricia Acosta-Vargas, Belén Salvador-Acosta, Sylvia Novillo-Villegas, Demetrios Sarantis, Luis Salvador-Ullauri

Abstract


This study examines the accessibility of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools for people with disabilities, using WCAG 2.2 success criteria as a reference. Significant accessibility issues were identified in the evaluated applications, highlighting barriers mainly affecting disabled users. Integrating accessibility considerations from the beginning of application development and adopting a proactive approach are emphasized. Although challenges are faced, such as the shortage of inclusive training data and opacity in AI decision-making, the need to continue addressing various aspects of accessibility in the field of generative AI tools is acknowledged. These efforts are based on regulatory compliance and ethical principles to ensure equal societal participation, regardless of individual abilities. The fundamental role of accessibility in realizing this vision is highlighted, aligning with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, particularly those related to equality, education, innovation, and inclusion. Improving accessibility meets regulatory requirements and contributes to a broader global agenda for a more equitable and sustainable future.

 

Doi: 10.28991/ESJ-2024-08-04-021

Full Text: PDF


Keywords


Generative Artificial Intelligence; Web Accessibility; WCAG 2.2; Sustainable Development Goals; Inclusive; Sustainable Future.

References


Glazko, K. S., Yamagami, M., Desai, A., Mack, K. A., Potluri, V., Xu, X., & Mankoff, J. (2023). An Autoethnographic Case Study of Generative Artificial Intelligence’s Utility for Accessibility. The 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, 99, 1-8. doi:10.1145/3597638.3614548.

Feuerriegel, S., Hartmann, J., Janiesch, C., & Zschech, P. (2023). Generative AI. Business & Information Systems Engineering, 66(1), 111–126. doi:10.1007/s12599-023-00834-7.

Roegiest, A., & Pinkosova, Z. (2024). Generative Information Systems Are Great If You Can Read. Proceedings of the 2024 ACM SIGIR Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval, 165 - 177. doi:10.1145/3627508.3638345.

Pascual, J. K., & Osorio, C. P. (2023). The Road to a More Accessible Web: Bridging the Inequality Gap with AI. Swiss Cognitive, Küsnacht, Switzerland. Available online: https://swisscognitive.ch/2023/10/10/the-road-to-a-more-accessible-web-bridging-the-inequality-gap-with-ai/ (accessed on May 2024).

Silva, J. S. R., Cardoso, P. C. F., de Bettio, R. W., Tavares, D. C., Silva, C. A., Watanabe, W. M., & Freire, A. P. (2024). In-Page Navigation Aids for Screen-Reader Users with Automatic Topicalisation and Labelling. ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing, 12, 1-45. doi:10.1145/3649223.

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). (2023). Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2. World Wide Web Consortium, Cambridge, United States. Available online: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/ (accessed on May 2024).

López, J. L., Espinilla, M., & Verdejo, Á. (2023). Evaluation of the Impact of the Sustainable Development Goals on an Activity Recognition Platform for Healthcare Systems. Sensors, 23(7), 3563. doi:10.3390/s23073563.

Sarker, I. H. (2022). AI-Based Modeling: Techniques, Applications and Research Issues Towards Automation, Intelligent and Smart Systems. SN Computer Science, 3(2), 158. doi:10.1007/s42979-022-01043-x.

Haleem, A., Javaid, M., Asim Qadri, M., Pratap Singh, R., & Suman, R. (2022). Artificial intelligence (AI) applications for marketing: A literature-based study. International Journal of Intelligent Networks, 3, 119–132. doi:10.1016/j.ijin.2022.08.005.

Weisz, J. D., He, J., Muller, M., Hoefer, G., Miles, R., & Geyer, W. (2024). Design Principles for Generative AI Applications. Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1-22. doi:10.1145/3613904.3642466.

Nasser, N., Ali, A. G., Karim, L., & Al-Helali, A. (2024). Advancing Vehicular Independence for the Visually Impaired Through Smart Technology. ScienceOpen Preprints, 1-12. doi:10.14293/PR2199.000771.v1.

van Toorn, G. (2024). Inclusion interrupted: Lessons from the making of a digital assistant by and for people with disability. Government Information Quarterly, 41(1), 101900. doi:10.1016/j.giq.2023.101900.

Perez Medina, J. L., Gonzalez, M., Pilco, H. M., Beatriz Jimenes Vargas, K., Acosta-Vargas, P., Sanchez-Gordon, S., Calle-Jimenez, T., Esparza, D., & Rybarczyk, Y. (2019). Usability study of a web-based platform for home motor rehabilitation. IEEE Access, 7, 7932–7947. doi:10.1109/ACCESS.2018.2889257.

Javaid, M., Haleem, A., Singh, R. P., & Suman, R. (2021). Substantial capabilities of robotics in enhancing industry 4.0 implementation. Cognitive Robotics, 1, 58–75. doi:10.1016/j.cogr.2021.06.001.

Alabdulatif, A., Khalil, I., & Saidur Rahman, M. (2022). Security of Blockchain and AI-Empowered Smart Healthcare: Application-Based Analysis. Applied Sciences (Switzerland), 12(21). doi:10.3390/app122111039.

Google Trends. (2023). Trend in artificial intelligence-based applications in the last 12 months. Google Trends, the Mountain View, United States. Available online: https://trends.google.es/trends/explore?q=ChatGPT,Chatsonic,DeepL,Grammarly, Rayyan (accessed on May 2024).

Fakrudeen, M. (2023). Accessibility of Multimedia Resources from Irish Universities for People with Epilepsy. Emerging Technologies in Computing, iCETiC 2022, Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, 463, Springer, Cham, Switzerland. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-25161-0_10.

Acosta-Vargas, P., Zarate-Estrella, S., Mantilla-Vaca, F., Novillo-Villegas, S., Chimbo, C., & Luján-Mora, S. (2021). Towards accessibility and inclusion of native mobile applications available for ecuador in google play store. Sustainability (Switzerland), 13(20). doi:10.3390/su132011237.

WebAIM (2023). Institute for Disability Research USU. The WebAIM Million 2023. Institute for Disability Research, Policy, and Practice, Logan, United States. Available online: https://webaim.org/projects/million/ (accessed on May 2024).

W3C. (2018). Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 World Wide Web Consortium, Cambridge, United States. Available online: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/ (accessed on May 2024).

Acosta-Vargas, P., Salvador-Acosta, B., Salvador-Ullauri, L., & Jadán-Guerrero, J. (2022). Accessibility challenges of e-commerce websites. PeerJ Computer Science, 8. doi:10.7717/PEERJ-CS.891.

United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific. (2016). Reduce inequality within and among countries. Statistical Yearbook for Asia and the Pacific 2015, United Nations, New York, United States. doi:10.18356/7df2027f-en.

United Nations. (2023). Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development 2023. United Nations, New York, United States. Available online: https://www.globalgoals.org/goals/16-peace-justice-and-strong-institutions/ (accessed on May 2024).

United Nations. (2023). Partnerships for the Goals 2023. United Nations, New York, United States. Available online: https://www.globalgoals.org/goals/17-partnerships-for-the-goals/ (accessed on May 2024).

Barua, P. D., Vicnesh, J., Gururajan, R., Oh, S. L., Palmer, E., Azizan, M. M., Kadri, N. A., & Acharya, U. R. (2022). Artificial Intelligence Enabled Personalised Assistive Tools to Enhance Education of Children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders—A Review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(3), 1192. doi:10.3390/ijerph19031192.

Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool (WebAIM), Logan, United States. Available online: https://wave.webaim.org/ (accessed on May 2024).

VOSviewer version 1.6.19 (2024). VOSviewer, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands. Available online: https://www.vosviewer.com/ (accessed on May 2024).

Emenike, M. E., & Emenike, B. U. (2023). Was This Title Generated by ChatGPT? Considerations for Artificial Intelligence Text-Generation Software Programs for Chemists and Chemistry Educators. Journal of Chemical Education, 100(4), 1413–1418. doi:10.1021/acs.jchemed.3c00063.

Tiwary, T., & Mahapatra, R. P. (2022). Web Accessibility Challenges for Disabled and Generation of Alt Text for Images in Websites using Artificial Intelligence. 2022 3rd International Conference on Issues and Challenges in Intelligent Computing Techniques (ICICT). doi:10.1109/icict55121.2022.10064545.

Draffan, E. A., Ding, C., Wald, M., Everett, H., Barrett, J., Sasikant, A., ... & Newman, R. (2020). Can a Web Accessibility Checker Be Enhanced by the Use of AI?. Computers Helping People with Special Needs, ICCHP 2020, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 12376, Springer, Cham, Switzerland. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-58796-3_9.

Reddy, S. (2024). Generative AI in healthcare: an implementation science informed translational path on application, integration and governance. Implementation Science, 19(1). doi:10.1186/s13012-024-01357-9.

Acosta-Vargas, P., Novillo-Villegas, S., Salvador-Acosta, B., Calvopina, M., Kyriakidis, N., Ortiz-Prado, E., & Salvador-Ullauri, L. (2022). Accessibility Analysis of Worldwide COVID-19-Related Information Portals. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(19), 12102. doi:10.3390/ijerph191912102.

Acosta-Vargas, P., Lujan-Mora, S., & Salvador-Ullauri, L. (2017). Quality evaluation of government websites. 2017 Fourth International Conference on EDemocracy & EGovernment (ICEDEG), 8-14. doi:10.1109/icedeg.2017.7962507.

Ara, J., & Sik-Lanyi, C. (2022). Investigation of COVID-19 Vaccine Information Websites across Europe and Asia Using Automated Accessibility Protocols. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(5). doi:10.3390/ijerph19052867.

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). (2014).Website Accessibility Conformance Evaluation Methodology (WCAG-EM) 1.0. World Wide Web Consortium, Cambridge, United States. Available online: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG-EM/ (accessed on May 2024).

Synthesia. (2023). 105 Fun AI Tools You’ve Never Heard of. Synthesia, London, United Kingdom Available online: https://www.synthesia.io/post/ai-tools (accessed on May 2024).

Mendeley Data 2024;V2. (2024). Acosta-Vargas P. (Dataset) Generative AI tools. Mendeley Data 2024;V2. Elsevier, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Available online: https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/2kyksx8hty/2 (accessed on May 2024).

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). (2018). W3C Issues Improved Accessibility Guidance for Websites and Applications. World Wide Web Consortium, Cambridge, United States. Available online: https://www.w3.org/2018/06/pressrelease-wcag21.html.en (accessed on May 2024).

López-Gil, J. M., & Pereira, J. (2024). Turning manual web accessibility success criteria into automatic: an LLM-based approach. Universal Access in the Information Society. doi:10.1007/s10209-024-01108-z.

Othman, A., Dhouib, A., & Nasser Al Jabor, A. (2023). Fostering websites accessibility: A case study on the use of the Large Language Models ChatGPT for automatic remediation. Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Pervasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments, 707 - 713. doi:10.1145/3594806.3596542.

Jiang, J., Ma, X., Ouyang, D., & Williams, R. O. (2022). Emerging Artificial Intelligence (AI) Technologies Used in the Development of Solid Dosage Forms. Pharmaceutics, 14(11), 2257. doi:10.3390/pharmaceutics14112257.


Full Text: PDF

DOI: 10.28991/ESJ-2024-08-04-021

Refbacks



Copyright (c) 2024 Patricia Acosta-Vargas