WebInSight:

Abstract

Images without alternative text are a barrier to equal web access for blind users. To illustrate the problem, we conducted a series of studies that conclusively show that a large fraction of significant images have no alternative text. To ameliorate this problem, we introduce WebInSight, a system that automatically creates and inserts alternative text into web pages on-the-fly. To formulate alternative text for images, we present three labeling modules based on web context analysis, enhanced optical character recognition (OCR) and human labeling. The system caches alternative text in a local database and can add new labels seamlessly after a web page is downloaded, resulting in minimal impact to the browsing experience.