Open, Transparent, and Relationship-Centered
Access Hound was created with an educational foundation, scholarly ideals, and a goal to make the world a better place, through better media accessibility. We are people, with bills to pay, like anyone else, but profit is not our primary objective at Access Hound. We believe that by doing good in the world, we will sustain ourselves and simultaneously develop, out of the ether, something extremely valuable for everyone: Inclusiveness. Everyone can be a part of this club. Everyone should feel welcomed in our public places. If media accessibility is a main obstacle to connecting people to community gathering places, we are going to break those problems down, rip them up, and build better media in their place, because it's not only the right thing to do but also because it's best for the greater good. Everyone can join us and help us to make the world a better place, one description at a time. Other important ideas about Access Hound's foundational structure and ideals that we want to openly share with you are:
- We chose 'Dogs as our underlying metaphor for important reasons: To begin with, we could have made our GenAI agents look like anything. We chose 'Dogs, because they have survived and thrived for thousands of years through a social technique called "Survival of the Friendliest." We operate in the same fundamental way, through extreme friendliness, kindness, and goodwill toward you.
- Why are Access Houndʻs GenAI agents ʻDogs dressed like people? Interfaces are designed on an audience-awareness spectrum from an "immediate" aesthetic, at one end, in which the interface is intended to be as "invisible" as possible, and extending to a "hypermediate" aesthetic, on the other end of the spectrum, in which the audience member is supposed to pause, recognize, and reflect about the interface as something mediated, crafted, and even containing some amount of creativity (but itʻs definitely not a real person doing the work of the ʻDogs). We focused intently on the hypermediate end of the design possibilities in order to emphasize that the GenAI collaborators that we are integrating are algorithmic agents, not people. We do not want any confusion about that.
- How much of the description work gets done by people? Our partners decide. We have three basic modes of collaboration: Human only, Hybrid (People + GenAI), and GenAI only. Every organization has different sensibilities, requirements, and expectations. Our pledge is to be transparent about it all. Partners need to know when and how much of our work together is done by people and how much is in a hybrid state or even entirely computer generated. We are clear, open, and transparent about it. When collaborating with our ʻDogs, our partners are collaborating with our specialized and highly trained GenAI tools, and when working with Access Hound staff members, we are the humans in the loop, keeping people centered in all of our interactions.
- You own them. These descriptions are your descriptions, to use how you wish: We make no proprietary claim on your descriptions. You can create them in our systems knowing that you own them, control them, and ultimately have complete say in how they are used and distributed. We will never sell your data to a third-party.
- We practice what we preach about web and mobile accessibility: All of the content on our website and in our mobile apps is intended to meet (and exceed) the World Wide Web Consortium Web Accessibility Initiative - W3C WAI's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0+, Level AA conformance standards. We review our products thoroughly at least once a year (last review, Jan. 1, 2026), and we try our very best to make sure everything we make is fully accessible for people who are blind or with low-vision. But if we have missed something, please do not hesitate to contact us immediately at Report a Bug to Access Hound.
Access Hound
