How Alt Text Made the Web Legible to AI

The National Federation of the Blind filed a lawsuit against Target Corporation for making their website inaccessible to people with visual impairments, leading to a $6 million settlement fee and improved web accessibility features. Alt texts were originally used to describe images that took long time to load on 1990s dialup but today they are an essential accessibility feature for the internet. As web accessibility gains importance, many companies are now making accessibility a priority by adding alt texts to improve photo descriptions for visually impaired people. The abundance of labeled images with alt text pairs can be compiled into vast datasets and used to train AI models, reducing costs and improving scalability.