AI increasingly generates descriptions of images and live captions for audio and video, which were once slow to produce by hand. This makes photos, videos and apps more usable for people who are blind, have low vision, or are deaf or hard of hearing.
Automatically produced alt-text and captions widen access across the web and everyday tools, and they help everyone in situations like a noisy room or sound-off viewing. Automated output is not always accurate or nuanced, so human review matters where it counts, but it has sharply expanded how much content is accessible by default rather than as an afterthought.