Comment by stillpointlab
10 hours ago
I suppose it is a question of balance between: the entire web being better for all those that require accessibility vs. a subsection of that community holding their jobs. And it raises the possibility that the increased accessibility could lead to more job opportunities.
But I'm not really a consequentialist and think of things in virtue ethics terms. And using technology to scale benefits to a wider group of people doesn't conflict for me. YMMV.
It's not "virtue ethics". It's a fact: turning accessibility testing over to "AI" will deprive a group of low-income low-agency people with skin in the game of employment.
If society were perhaps more compassionate, and supportive of this group, then perhaps it wouldn't be so much of a problem.
As to your point about significantly improving accessibility of the web, we could do that right now, all of us, without "AI". We could have done that yesterday. Use semantic HTML, instead of injecting div-soup using Javascript into ad-riddled dark-patterned user hostile slop-pages.
"AI" (or accessibility audits themselves) are a bandaid after the fact. Accessibility needs to be baked in.