Human-Powered Accessibility

An approach to assistive technology that uses remote human workers — whether paid crowdworkers, volunteers, or trained agents — to provide accessibility services that automated systems cannot yet deliver reliably. Examples include providing real-time visual descriptions for blind users (VizWiz, Be My Eyes, Aira), generating image descriptions and alt text through crowdsourcing (ESP Game, Social Accessibility), correcting OCR errors in digitised documents, and captioning video content. Human-powered accessibility services can be synchronous (providing answers in seconds) or asynchronous (generating descriptions that persist for future users). Key design considerations include latency, cost, accuracy, privacy, scalability, and the sustainability of the worker pool over time.