Facebook’s new automatic alternative text feature can tell the visually impaired and blind what is in a photo.
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Starting today, Facebook will describe the contents of photos to the blind and visually impaired using a tool it calls “automatic alternative text”. Until now, however, the tool was limited to reading out text elements.
Prior to this advancement, people using screen readers only heard the name of the person who shared the image, followed by the word “photo”.
Automated alt text for photos posted on Facebook. When you swipe past a photo, you’ll hear this technology mention some of the items the photo may contain.
Now, using an AI algorithm that is able to determine what’s in a photo, Facebook will automatically describe via audio something like: “Image may contain three people, smiling, outdoors”.
It’s become nearly unimaginable to use social media without viewing or sharing images, yet for millions of blind and visually impaired people, this has been an everyday reality. The Facebook main focus is to connect all type of people no matter what situation thy are on, so using the Facebook now you can easily get the image expressed immediately you type the image.
“Every day, people share more than 2 billion photos across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp”, Facebook’s head of accessibility Jeffrey Wieland and others wrote in a blog post explaining the update. It analyzes each image for the presence of different elements, and then composes a short sentence describing it that is included in the web page as the “alt” text of the image. It’s unfair that we can be able to enjoy sharing, and left over more than 300 millions visually impaired people without being enjoy the moments and social interaction on Facebook.
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Enable VoiceOver by asking Siri to “turn on VoiceOver”, or by tapping on Settings General Accessibility VoiceOver. Facebook says that will all change with more platforms, languages and regions coming soon.
