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Blaming accessibility tools for what people do with them is reactionary (beehaw.org)

submitted 3 months ago by rosethornRangerTTV@beehaw.org to c/politics@beehaw.org

8 comments fedilink hide all child comments

People can do shitty things with accessibility. I could use alt-text on images to figure out who I could call slurs when I might not be able to otherwise.

That is not an argument against accessibility. People can potentially use their access to society to do harm, but not having access is guaranteed harm. It is not just guaranteed harm though, it is specifically systematic harm against disabled people on the basis of being disabled. Doing hierarchy because some members of another group might potentially choose to do hierarchy themselves does not reduce hierarchy overall, it makes it much worse.

Anybody who blames the accessibility tools themselves is a reactionary. This includes what people do with stuff like AI. No matter how much you try you will never go back to some ideal past. The AI is not going away. Your choice is simply whether or not you do hierarchy.

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[–] luciole@beehaw.org 17 points 3 months ago

Hard disagree. Tools can absolutely be blamed or otherwise regulated on account of their affordances. You're very close to the "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument.

I struggle with the framing of generative AI as an a11y tool as well. I understand that it may serve this purpose, but it's much more than that. Generative AI deserves scrutiny for being such a powerful disinformation tool, for driving massive power consumption and for perpetuating harmful biases.

Also I don't see what you're trying to achieve preemptively calling anyone who disagrees a reactionary... Look, you've been posting a lot of hot takes daily for a while now and I feel like maybe you'd profit from reading and reflecting on things, take time to dig into stuff? Right now you're just asserting one thing after another as fact with little to support any of it.

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 16 points 3 months ago (2 children)

This is the first I've heard of people blaming accessibility tools for anything.

You gave the example of alt text being used to hide slurs, but I'd be pretty confident this would be handled the same way as if they used them in the open. It would be brought to an admin or mods attention, they would confirm, and take appropriate action. Trolls regularly use slurs in the open so I don't see why this situation would be handled differently.

Are there other examples of accessibility tools being used for bad things?

[–] drwilhi@beehaw.org 5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Ebikes are an accessibility tool and are under constant attack from governments and the population at large.

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 5 points 3 months ago

Ah I hadn't considered Ebikes or physical tools. With the example of alt text, I had thought the post was about digital tools like screen readers .

[–] rosethornRangerTTV@beehaw.org 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

yeah the hatred of bikes is a big one, and so are cars. Lots of the "an"prim type on that front. Being able to walk places is cool, removing all cars is not.

[–] kugel7c@feddit.org 4 points 3 months ago

Removing almost all cars is the only way to effectively be able to walk to places.

[–] rosethornRangerTTV@beehaw.org 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

well lots of people blaming AI art for things, when it is just a different method to make art, cameras a while ago following the same trend

Then there is the constant attack of service animals and such being allowed places. There are more I have talked about before but I can't remember them off the top of my head

it tends to be on a much more individual basis, peoples support of accessibility tools being conditional on whether or not they like that particular person. Similar to how liberals often try misgendering right wingers, especially trans ones like blair white and all that.

[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 11 points 3 months ago

So… nothing concrete about accessibility tools after all?