Picture: Julie Scarle and her guide dog Elsa
Blind Facebook users in Nottingham have hailed a breakthrough development involving ‘talking photos’.
The technology, called automatic alternative text, generates an audio description of a photo using recognition technology.
Before the development, people using screen readers would only hear the name of the person who shared the photo, and the term “photo”.
But the new technology will provide a summary of the picture, for example “trees, sky outdoors” for a picture of a woodland view.
Julie Scarle, who is registered blind and represents local charity, My Sight Nottinghamshire, said: “We would like to see the technology used for every platform.
“The primary thing that people share now is photographs, but when you can only read text you miss out.”
The alternative text technology is available for people to use on iOS screen readers set to English, but there are plans for this to be developed for other languages and platforms.
Video: Facebook’s object recognition technology
Nathan Edge, who is a volunteer at Guide Dogs, said: “The technology has been needed for a while because so many people use it and it connects you with the rest of the world.”
Nathan, 21, from Mansfield, went blind two years ago and uses social media to promote the charity and connect with friends.
He said: ” People who have a lot of blind friends will already put these descriptions on so people don’t miss out, the next thing is to see how well this new technology will work.”
Like many people who are blind or partially blind, Nathan uses an app called TapTapsee which helps people identify objects, by photographing the object and then providing a spoken identification.
Nathan said: ” It would be good if social media platforms could invest in this app because of its accuracy, for example if I take a picture of my guide dog it will say, yellow Labrador cross retriever.”
He added: “For people like me who were not blind at birth, our memory of objects combined with a description significantly changes the way in which we see an image.”
