AI-Assisted Accessibility Review 2025 — Refreshing Image QA Workflows for Web Agencies

In sectors such as public services, finance, and healthcare where accessibility standards are enforced rigorously, web production agencies must “leverage AI while safeguarding quality” across every image and motion asset they ship. Delivering ALT text, audio description, and captions for large volumes of hero images, UI mockups, and interaction GIFs on tight timelines demands a hybrid workflow that combines AI assistance with human review.

This article covers AI-driven drafting and review, alignment with WCAG 2.2 and Japan’s 2024 update to the Act for Eliminating Discrimination against Persons with Disabilities, plus how to build audit dashboards that keep clients informed.

TL;DR

• Keep AI output at the draft stage: batch-generate ALT text and captions with AI but assign clear review ownership.
• Tag WCAG 2.2 success criteria: map guidelines such as 1.1.1 Non-text Content and 1.2.3 Audio Description, then cross-check during automated audits.
• Monitor variance: track bias in AI-generated narratives to eliminate cultural or gender skew.
• Tie the runbook to tooling: link alt-text-linter reports with AI output logs to drive continuous improvement.
• Publish transparency reports: share weekly progress with clients to differentiate on compliance and brand trust.

End-to-end flow for AI-assisted accessibility

Template for AI draft generation

Standardize prompts to make AI output reproducible.

prompt: |
  You are an accessibility editor. Based on the image description in the JSON below,
  * Summarize the visual in ≤ 120 characters
  * Include subject, action, and context
  * Avoid subjective language or emotional tone
  * Preserve numbers and proper nouns as-is
  Return JSON with "alt" and "longDescription" keys.
styleGuide:
  - Be mindful of color-vision diversity
  - Avoid culturally sensitive expressions

Save the AI output as alt-drafts/*.json and request review through Pull Requests.

Automating ALT text review

Integrate the alt-text-linter CLI into CI to enforce baseline quality.

npx uit-alt-text-linter \
  --input content/ja/articles/**/assets/alt.json \
  --rules wcag22 \
  --locale ja-JP \
  --fail-on warning

The tool verifies:

• Text length under 120 characters when needed
• Removal of empty phrases such as “image” or “photo”
• Consistency of numbers and proper nouns
• Presence of color contrast descriptors where required

Variance detection: exposing bias

AI-generated ALT text often lands differently across readers. Introduce a Variance Index built from reviewer comments to quantify risk.

{
  "id": "hero-2025-landing",
  "varianceIndex": 0.32,
  "flags": [
    "gendered-language",
    "cultural-reference"
  ],
  "reviewers": 4,
  "status": "needs-rewrite"
}

If the variance exceeds 0.5, adjust AI parameters or update the style guide.

WCAG 2.2 mapping board

Real-time audit dashboards

Use image-trust-score-simulator to publish scores that fuse accessibility and provenance.

{
  "score": 86,
  "signals": {
    "hasAltText": true,
    "manualReview": true,
    "hasConsent": true,
    "restricted": false
  },
  "recommendations": [
    "Add language tags to caption files",
    "Share audio-description script"
  ]
}

Suggested widgets for Looker Studio:

• ALT text review completion rate
• Variance Index heat map
• Coverage by WCAG success criterion
• Compliance status by domestic/international law

Runbook sample

# ALT Review Runbook

## 1. Incident definition
- Missing ALT text
- Inappropriate AI-generated phrasing
- Suspected WCAG 1.1.1 failure

## 2. First response
1. Create Jira ticket with "A11Y-Incident"
2. Temporarily unpublish page (`noindex` + banner message)
3. Assemble response team (A11Y lead, QA, copy)

## 3. Remediation
- Regenerate AI draft
- Update style guide
- Add rule to `alt-text-linter`

## 4. Post-incident
- Complete postmortem within 48h
- Send report to client
- Add training content to LMS

Case study: medical portal

• Background: A medical case-study site had over 600 diagrams and photos without ALT text.
• Actions:
  • Embedded metadata (treatment name, patient profile, equipment) into AI prompts to boost accuracy.
  • Prioritized reviews where Variance Index > 0.4 to resolve tone discrepancies.
  • Added audio-description planning for motion assets via animation-governance-planner.
• Results: Achieved WCAG AA compliance in third-party audits. AI support cut effort by 45% while client satisfaction rose to 4.8/5.0.

Summary

• Use AI to accelerate draft copy while keeping review accountability clear and monitoring bias continuously.
• Integrate alt-text-linter, animation-governance-planner, and image-trust-score-simulator to align with WCAG 2.2 and evolving legal requirements.
• Maintain transparency reports and runbooks so clients see progress and audit readiness—turning accessibility into a strategic differentiator.

AI-assisted accessibility is more than defensive compliance; it’s a proactive lever for new proposals. In 2025, hybrid review workflows will be standard for web production teams that need both speed and quality.