AI-powered tool aims to help reduce bias and racially charged language on websites
22% of more than 500,000 business websites contain some form of racial and gender bias, according to UserWay.
Website accessibility tech provider UserWay has released an AI-powered tool designed to help organizations ensure their websites are free from discriminatory, biased, and racially charged language.
The tool, Content Moderator, flags content for review, and nothing is deleted or removed without approval from site administrators, according to UserWay.
UserWay’s customers are using its AI-powered accessibility widget, an advanced AI-based compliance-as-a-service (CaaS) technology that ensures brands provide an accessible digital experience that meets strict governmental and ADA regulations, the company said.
“Focusing on digital racism and bias is long past due, and our team is eager to contribute to the conversation positively,” UserWay founder and CEO Allon Mason said in a statement.
In June, Google announced that it would be reevaluating what it considers acceptable language, Mason noted. So far, Google has changed terms including “blacklist” to “blocked list,” “whitelist” to “allowed list,” and “master-slave” to “primary/secondary,” among others, he said.
“That was the spark that triggered us to build this tool. At the time, we were enhancing our AI-powered capabilities that supply [alternate] text descriptions of images for screen readers,” Mason said. “We realized that if word choices can make our customers’ digital content inaccessible even without intending to, UserWay should help.”
The goal of the Content Moderator isn’t to censor or silence, he added, but to make web teams aware of problematic language in user-generated content or in content they may have overlooked.
Before launching Content Moderator, UserWay ran its rule engine across more than 500,000 websites. The findings were concerning, the company said.
Some 22% of the sites scanned contained some form of biased, racially charged, or offensive language, UserWay said. Of those:
Words that the tool most often flagged for gender bias included “chairman,” “fireman,” “mankind,” “forefather,” and “man-made,” UserWay said.
Many of these terms have only recently been understood to be divisive and prejudicial. It is an enormous task for most site owners to keep track of the latest consensus around culturally sensitive terms, the company noted. The tool aims to make this task simple, centralized, and scalable, UserWay said.
