ChatGPT & Accessibility

Use ChatGPT to Help You Do the Things You're Supposed to Do (But Probably Aren't Doing)

By Katie Healey, PhD, CPACC, AccessibleHigherEd.com

Note: Accessibility can't be automated or outsourced, as you alone know your students and learning outcomes. But technology can help.

AI generative technologies are always changing; I used GPT 3.5 for this page.

Plain Language

Why? Shorter sentences and paragraphs minimize visual clutter on the page and help readers digest content more efficiently. This is especially helpful for people with dyslexia or other learning disabilities. Avoiding or clarifying jargon supports English language learners.

How? Demonstrate this feature for students as an accessibility tool and consider adjusting your own wordy, jargon-heavy writing.

Note the differences between these two explanations of Michel Foucault's biopower.

The second prompt requests an explanation in plain language:

Prompt: Explain Foucault's concept of biopower. Response: Foucault's concept of biopower refers to the ways in which power is exercised over populations, rather than just individuals. Biopower is concerned with regulating the biological and social life of people, and it does so through the use of various techniques such as medicine, psychology, and social policy. For example, biopower can be seen in the way that governments use public health campaigns to promote healthy behaviors or in the way that schools use psychological testing to identify students who might need additional support. In both cases, power is being exercised over individuals in a way that seeks to regulate their behavior and optimize their functioning within society. Foucault argues that biopower operates through a variety of institutional mechanisms, including prisons, hospitals, schools, and welfare systems. These institutions work together to create a system of social control that regulates the lives of individuals in modern society. Biopower is not just about controlling individuals, however. It is also about creating norms and standards that people are expected to conform to, such as the ideal of the "productive citizen" or the "healthy body". Overall, Foucault's concept of biopower is a way of understanding how power operates in modern society, and how it is exercised over individuals in ways that seek to regulate their behavior and optimize their functioning within society.

Prompt: Explain Foucault's concept of biopower in plain language. Response: Foucault's concept of biopower is about how power works in society to control and regulate the lives of groups of people. This includes things like laws and policies, medical practices, and other ways that society tries to make sure everyone is healthy and functioning well. It's like when your school or your parents make rules to keep you safe and healthy, but on a bigger scale for lots of people. The idea is that society wants everyone to be healthy and productive, so it creates rules and norms to try to make that happen.

Alt Text

What? Alternative text—or alt text—describes visuals. Embedded in code, alt text is not visible; screen readers voice this image description aloud to blind and low-vision users. Folks with certain cognitive disabilities also benefit from screen readers.

All visuals on learning materials, slides, exams, Canvas sites, webpages, emails, social media, etc. should include alt text or longer image descriptions within the text (or should be marked as decorative if not conveying useful information).

How? Ask Google or ChatGPT. It's slightly different for each program, but you'll usually find an "alt text" option by right clicking or selecting image options. This page also shows how to add alt text to Word, Google Docs/Slides, and Canvas.

ChatGPT's image descriptions are often incorrect, and you should NOT rely on auto-generated descriptions. Your image descriptions should be tailored to your student learning outcomes.

However, it sometimes offers a helpful starting point for writing your own alt text.

Try prompting it to write alt text for an image by pasting the image URL.

Prompt: Write alt text for this image that includes Foucault: Image URL. Response: A black and white schematic drawing of the Panopticon, a circular prison design proposed by philosopher Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century. This image is often associated with the concept of "disciplinary power" developed by philosopher Michel Foucault, who used the Panopticon as a metaphor for modern forms of control and surveillance. The image shows the circular building with a central watchtower, surrounded by individual cells arranged in a circular formation. The design maximizes surveillance and control over prisoners, who are unable to see the guards but are aware they may be watched at any time.

You can specify keywords to include (like Foucault above).

Image from Wikipedia's entry on Panopticon.

You can specify the length of description.

Canvas encourages 120 characters or fewer; other programs have different limits.

Prompt: write an alt text description of 120 characters for this image: Image URL. Response: Panopticon: A circular prison with a watchtower in the center. The cells are visible from the tower, allowing for constant surveillance.

Prompt: describe this image: Long URL. Hidden in the code is alt text that simply says RMS Titanic. Response: The image at the provided link is a historic black and white photograph of the RMS Titanic, a famous British passenger liner that famously sank on its maiden voyage in 1912. The photograph shows the Titanic at sea, with its hull and superstructure clearly visible in the foreground. The ship appears to be massive, with numerous decks and levels visible, and its white paint and black accents give it a distinctive appearance. Smoke is billowing from the ship's four large funnels, suggesting that its boilers are running and it is underway. The sea is calm and flat, with no other ships or land visible in the background. Overall, the photograph conveys a sense of the Titanic's grandeur and scale, as well as its tragic place in history.

Note that the original alt text was simply "R.M.S. Titanic," which does not describe the image.

Note the descriptive information contained within the image's URL below.

The alt text is fairly accurate but needs some revision:

Prompt: Describe this image: URL includes words like cat, sunglasses, shirt, and fabric hammock. Response: The image shows a white cat wearing sunglasses and a shirt lying on a fabric hammock. The cat is facing upwards, looking directly at the camera, and appears to be relaxed and content. The hammock is brightly colored and patterned, and is suspended in what appears to be an outdoor setting with green plants visible in the background. The cat's fur is white and fluffy, and its eyes are covered by the sunglasses which have a reflective surface. The shirt worn by the cat is blue and has a tropical floral pattern.

Five people in formal attire and a golden Laborador retriever on a red carpet. Three people sit in powered wheelchairs, and two folks stand. They all smile and look toward the camera except for the service dog, who faces left.

And often, the alt text is entirely inaccurate & needs a complete rewrite:

Prompt: write alt text - image URL provided. Response: photograph of a long line of cars on a road at night, with bright headlights and taillights creating streaks of light in the image. The scene is captured from an elevated perspective, with a bridge visible in the distance and city lights illuminating the sky. The cars appear to be stopped or moving very slowly, as there are no visible gaps between them. The overall mood of the image is busy and congested, with a sense of tension and frustration conveyed by the gridlocked traffic.

Multimodal Learning

Why? Universal Design for Learning encourages instructors to provide multiple means of representation, engagement, action & expression. Offering multimodal learning opportunities honors learner variability.

How? Try prompting ChatGPT for ideas of activities, songs, podcasts, or films related to a course topic, and demonstrate this for students.

Prompt: Give me an activity that will help me understand Foucault's panopticon. Response: One activity that can help you understand Foucault's panopticon is to create a miniature model of a panopticon prison. Materials needed: A large clear plastic container with a lid Construction paper or cardboard Scissors Glue or tape Small figurines or objects to represent prisoners One figurine or object to represent the guard Instructions: Cut out small squares from the construction paper or cardboard to create small cells. Glue or tape the cells to the inside of the plastic container, leaving an open space in the center. Place the figurines or objects inside the cells to represent the prisoners. Place the guard figurine or object in the open space in the center of the container. Close the lid and observe from above. As you observe the model, notice how the guard can see all of the prisoners at once, but the prisoners cannot see the guard. This creates a sense of constant surveillance and control over the prisoners, even if the guard is not actively monitoring them. This is similar to how the panopticon prison system was designed to operate, with prisoners under constant observation and control, even if the guard was not physically present in their cells. By creating and observing a miniature model of a panopticon prison, you can better understand how the panopticon system works and the implications it has for the exercise of power and control in society.

Activity idea

Prompt: What is a movie that reflects Foucault's panopticon? Response: One movie that reflects Foucault's panopticon is "The Truman Show" directed by Peter Weir. The movie depicts a man named Truman who unknowingly lives his entire life in a constructed reality television show, where every aspect of his life is monitored and controlled by a team of producers and crew members. He is essentially living in a panopticon, where he is constantly watched and controlled without his knowledge. The film explores themes of surveillance, control, and the power dynamics between those who observe and those who are observed.

Film

Song

Podcast

Captions/Transcripts

We should always provide captions or transcripts for videos, podcasts, or other media.

How? Use programs like Otter to auto-generate transcripts. Then, copy and paste into ChatGPT and prompt it to clean up all spelling and grammar errors without deleting content.

You can then save as an SRT file and upload.

Prompt: Write transcripts for this video: URL Response: Unfortunately, I cannot provide a transcript for this video as it is a copyrighted material and my responses must adhere to ethical and legal guidelines. However, you can easily obtain a transcript of the video by reaching out to the uploader or the creator of the video directly, or by using a third-party transcription service.

You'll have to copy and paste the transcript into ChatGPT rather than provide the video link.

I used Otter to capture a portion of A.J. Juliani's The Backwards Podcast episode with Jay McTighe, which does not have a transcript, and pasted it into ChatGPT (see left below).

I then prompted ChatGPT to "correct the spelling and punctuation errors without deleting anything" (see right below).

Well, you mentioned earlier your experience in coaching, and both Grant and I were coaches. And so, if you think about coaching or sponsoring almost any extracurricular activity, or where my wife is in art, visual art, in those areas, backward design is like the norm. In coaching, if it's a team sport, you're always coaching with the game in mind, which involves authentic performance. You plan backwards from the game, you do a task analysis of what the game calls for, then you take the players you have on your team and you find out where they are in terms of their knowledge, skill, and understanding. And then you plan your practices forward, but it's always with the game in mind. And I like to give a little nudge to teachers sometimes by saying, "Look, coaches plan backward." The theater director plans backward from the opening night of the play, and that's the norm. But you don't hear coaches saying, "I don't have time for the games that they take all afternoon. I'll never get through the playbook." Right? But you hear understandable reasons, thinking their job is to cover the textbook or the novel or all the standards that are laid out in grade-level standards. And so just the experience in coaching that both Grant and I had said, "No, that's not the right model. The right model is being clear about what you want kids to be able to do in authentic ways with their learning, plan backward from that, find out where the students are, and then you build your lessons, i.e., practices, accordingly." For us, it did make natural sense, and there were good models out there. The one thing I'll add, however, is I was never taught to plan this way, nor did I do it in my early years of teaching. Mine was kind of a ready, fire, aim model.

Same text as previous image, but with cleaned up punctuation and spelling.

This broke up the text into paragraphs, improved punctuation for readability, recognized that "grant" was a name and capitalized it, and put quotation marks around statements.

Note that transcripts are trickier with multiple speakers. You'll still need to edit/review transcripts after ChatGPT assistance. Still, this can save you time!