Being on any social media network is great, but if you are visually impaired, you might miss out on one of the most important aspects, like the sharing of photos.
By incorporating some of the best artificial intelligence technologies in object recognition, Facebook’s Automatic Alternative text will describe an object to someone who is unable to see it.
“Facebook’s mission is to make the world more open and connected. This means that we want everyone to have equal access to connect with others. Worldwide, more than 39 million people are blind, and over 246 million have a severe visual impairment. As Facebook becomes an increasingly visual experience, we hope our new automatic alternative text technology will help the blind community experience Facebook the same way others enjoy it,” Facebook said in a statement.
So how does it work?
Well, it is very similar to screen readers that people already use, but instead of just using the term ‘photo’ when scrolling past one, photos will now be described in better detail. As Facebook demonstrated with a collection of images, the description might read out loud “Image may contain three people, smiling, outdoors.”
It is at the moment only available for iOS devices, and you can give it a try if you like.
Enable VoiceOver by asking Siri to “turn on VoiceOver,” or by tapping on Settings > General > Accessibility > VoiceOver. Once enabled, you can open the Facebook app and swipe to scroll through your News Feed or a profile. When you swipe past a photo, you’ll hear this technology mention some of the items the photo may contain.
The feature is similar to what Twitter implemented last week.
[Image – Pixabay]
