this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2024
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Mozilla Firefox new alt-text generator powered by "fully private on-device AI model" (hacks.mozilla.org)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by frogman@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org
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New accessibility feature coming to Firefox, an "AI powered" alt-text generator.

"Starting in Firefox 130, we will automatically generate an alt text and let the user validate it. So every time an image is added, we get an array of pixels we pass to the ML engine and a few seconds after, we get a string corresponding to a description of this image (see the code).

...

Our alt text generator is far from perfect, but we want to take an iterative approach and improve it in the open.

...

We are currently working on improving the image-to-text datasets and model with what we’ve described in this blog post..."

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[–] IllNess@infosec.pub 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

But even for a simple static page there are certain types of information, like alternative text for images, that must be provided by the author to provide an understandable experience for people using assistive technology (as required by the spec)

I wonder if this includes websites that use <figcaption> with alt emptied.

[–] Kissaki@beehaw.org 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

MDN figure and figcaption has no mention of changed img alt intentions. Which makes sense to me.

figure does not invalidate or change how img is to be used. The caption may often not but can differ from the image description. If alt describes the image, figcaption captions it.

What the fuck is Lemmy doing, breaking with HTML in code formatting?? Man it's completely broken. I committed sth so it doesn't remove the img lol.

<figure>
  img src="party.jpg" alt="people partying" />
  <figcaption>Me and my mates</figcaption>
</figure>
[–] IllNess@infosec.pub 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Yes you can use both but I've seen some front end developers blank out alt altogether when they are using figcaption.

I did not find this practice in MDN Web Docs but I found it in an other place:

If you’re using an image that has a caption, it may not need alt text if the caption contains all of the relevant visual information.

I was just wondering what Mozilla's method was for finding these images and if they took other things in to consideration like decorative images.

[–] Kissaki@beehaw.org 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Where is that quote from?

[–] IllNess@infosec.pub 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I put a link after the quote. That's the source.

[–] Kissaki@beehaw.org 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I don't see a link. Post content source is empty too.

screenshot 1

screenshot 2

[–] IllNess@infosec.pub 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

https://www.boia.org/blog/should-you-include-alt-text-for-pictures-with-captions

I think their might be something wrong with your browser or something. I tried the code blocks using spaces, tabs, and backticks, and I didn't have the img problem you had.

I also checked from a different account on a different instance on a different browser this post and I can see the link.

[–] IllNess@infosec.pub 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

[–] Kissaki@beehaw.org 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Given that it's not in the comment source I doubt it's a browser issue. But if you can see it… wtf

When I open the comment in your original instance context it's there. Your comment was edited. Did you edit it in? I guess it got lost between instance communication lol.

[–] IllNess@infosec.pub 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I looked through the beehaw instance and I saw what you had screenshot. You are right. It is not your browser, it is the instance.

Currently they currently on 0.18.4. Infosec.pub is currently on 0.19.3. Maybe that's the issue...

[–] Kissaki@beehaw.org 1 points 5 months ago

oh god, would suck if it's another broken Lemmy release

I had other formatting problems with HTML inside code blocks being removed and bleeding out of them generating other closing tags. Maybe that was also related.

[–] Kissaki@beehaw.org 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Interesting. It also made me look at the MDN docs again. img alt is consistent to that. I wasn't aware of the empty for omittable images.

I also looked at figure again, and in my interpretation it does declare that figcaption is to be used.

figure represents self-contained content. figcaption provides the accessible name for the parent. The accessible name is is the text associated with an HTML element that provides users of assistive technology with a label for the element.

The resolution order being aria-labelledby, aria-label, input[type=button][value], input[type=image]|img|area[alt], …

So figcaption takes priority over img alt.

[–] IllNess@infosec.pub 2 points 5 months ago

Thanks for the info. The Accessible name calculation page is really interesting.