Perceptual Gap

A design failure identified by Choudhury (2026) in which an AI system's explanation is delivered through exactly the sensory channel that its user cannot access. For example, a Grad-CAM heat map overlaid on an image tells a blind user where the model looked but cannot be seen by the user who was relying on the AI precisely because they could not see the image in the first place. Closing the perceptual gap requires multimodal or non-visual explanations — textual descriptions, auditory data narratives, tactile renderings — and explanations whose components are verifiable through senses the user still has available.