How University Disability Services Professionals Write Image Descriptions for HCI Figures Using Generative AI

Abstract

Disability Services Office (DSO) professionals at higher education institutions write alt text for {visual content}. However, due to the complexity of visual content, such as HCI figures in research publications, DSO professionals can struggle to write high-quality alt text if they lack subject expertise. Generative AI has shown potential in understanding figures and writing their descriptions, yet its support for DSO professionals is underexplored, and limited work evaluates the quality of alt text generated with AI assistance. In this work, we conducted two studies: first, we investigated generative AI support for writing alt text for HCI figures with 12 DSO professionals. Second, we recruited 11 HCI experts to evaluate the alt text written by DSO professionals. Findings show that alt text written solely by DSO professionals has lower quality than alt text written with AI assistance. AI assistance also helped DSO professionals write alt text more quickly and with greater confidence; however, they reported inefficiencies in interactions with the AI. Our work contributes to exploring AI support for non-subject expert accessibility professionals.