DEV Community

Mirela Prifti
Mirela Prifti

Posted on • Originally published at mirelaprifti.Medium on

Should we use AI tools to generate alt text? 

Alt text, also known as “alternative text” or “alt tag”, is used to describe the content of an image on a web page, and is especially important for people with visual impairments who rely on screen readers to navigate the web.

Many AI tools can generate alt text these days; they analyse an image and automatically generate a description. Having a tool to assist with alt text could be a good starting point, especially for non-native speakers and those without a wide vocabulary.

My experience with alt text AI tools so far is still in the research stage, so I am not in the position to convincingly recommend any of them. But I believe there are a few tools that help with alt text and much more that may be worth exploring 🔍.


Computer Vision | Microsoft Azure  —  azure.microsoft.com

An Azure Cognitive Service, it extracts rich information from images and analyse content with Computer Vision.

Machine Learning Image and Video Analysis — Amazon Rekognition — Amazon Web Services  —  aws.amazon.com

Amazon Rekognition automates image and video analysis for your applications and is easy to implement without machine learning (ML) experience.

Vision AI | Cloud Vision API | Google Cloud  —  cloud.google.com

Derive insights from images with AutoML Vision, use pre-trained Vision API models, or create computer vision applications with Vertex AI Vision.

In any case, we should always review the alt text generated by AI to ensure that the information provided is accurate and context-based, and, when necessary, manually adjust it.


Thank you for reading this article! If you have any further questions or insights, or if you find inaccuracies in the content, I would be happy to hear from you. You can get in touch with me via email, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

Image of Timescale

Timescale – the developer's data platform for modern apps, built on PostgreSQL

Timescale Cloud is PostgreSQL optimized for speed, scale, and performance. Over 3 million IoT, AI, crypto, and dev tool apps are powered by Timescale. Try it free today! No credit card required.

Try free

Top comments (0)

A Workflow Copilot. Tailored to You.

Pieces.app image

Our desktop app, with its intelligent copilot, streamlines coding by generating snippets, extracting code from screenshots, and accelerating problem-solving.

Read the docs

👋 Kindness is contagious

Please leave a ❤️ or a friendly comment on this post if you found it helpful!

Okay