How AI Integration Revolutionized Accessibility for an Educational Platform

If you manage digital learning content, you know how vital accessibility is for both regulatory compliance and true educational inclusion. 

Accurate image descriptions (alt text) are essential — not just for meeting legal standards, but for ensuring that all students, including those using assistive technology, have an engaging, equitable experience.

But what happens when your educational platform has over 150,000 images, each needing a careful, non-spoiler description? That was the challenge facing one of our clients as new state regulations made accessible content more urgent than ever.

The client's situation

Our client, a major provider of online learning, had amassed approximately 150,000 images embedded throughout thousands of lessons. Previously, each image's alt text was entered manually — a process that was:

• Time-consuming
• Inconsistent in quality from one editor to another
• Nearly impossible to scale or audit across such a massive library

With new accessibility legislation in effect, the stakes were suddenly much higher, and the old approach just wouldn't cut it.

Our AI-powered approach: seamless integration

Rather than shoehorn in a new app or manual process, we focused on a seamless AI integration with their existing Laravel/Inertia/Vue platform—leveraging Nova to fit perfectly into their daily workflow.

Here's how our solution worked:

Full-content analytics

Our custom Nova dashboard surfaced exactly which lessons and learning paths were missing alt text, providing instant, platform-wide visibility.

Streamlined reporting

Editors no longer had to wade through each individual lesson; they could access clear, actionable reports right in their dashboard.

Efficient editing tools

Admins and editors could update alt text on a granular level—one image at a time — or batch-process updates across entire lesson hierarchies, all using familiar tools.

AI with educational sensitivity

In education, description quality is critical — but so is context. For many lesson activities, "giving away the answer" with direct alt text would undermine the learning experience. For example, if a lesson asks "What is this?" alongside a picture of a dog, the alt text shouldn't simply be "A dog."

To solve this, we designed our AI integration with context-aware customization:

For every image, the AI model received information about the lesson's challenge or question. Prompts included explicit instructions not to reveal answers, but to describe features neutrally.

The result:

Instead of "a dog," the tool will generate something like "a furry animal with floppy ears and four legs."

By refining prompts based on feedback, we maintained educational integrity while ensuring full accessibility.

The Outcome

Our results were decisive:

• Over 99% of generated alt text was ready to publish as-is, minimizing the need for manual corrections.
• Significant time saved — from hours (or even days) of manual entry down to minutes for even large lesson sets.
• Consistent, higher-quality alt text across thousands of lessons, eliminating human inconsistency.
• Confident, timely compliance with new state regulations.
• Better student experiences: Visually impaired learners received alt text that was descriptive, appropriate, and sensitive to learning objectives.

Key takeaways

This integration showed that, when thoughtfully applied, AI does more than automate tedious work — it enhances both operational efficiency and content quality. By embedding new tools directly into the platforms educators already trust, we deliver accessibility, compliance, and a better user experience without disrupting established workflows.

For education providers and content-rich organizations, the right AI approach is a force multiplier — streamlining compliance and raising the bar for inclusion.

Ready to upgrade your accessibility?

If your platform faces accessibility, compliance, or content quality challenges, we'd love to show you what's possible with the latest AI-powered tools — tailored to your needs and your audience.

Reach out to us for a consultation or demo, and let's build a more accessible future for every learner.