Hello,
Below the link is the entire article.
Jeanne
https://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw170602
Article: AccessWorld
June 2016 Issue
Volume 17 Number 6 <https://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw1706toc>
Access to Entertainment and Social Media
What Facebook Wants You to Know about Automatic Alternative Text
Bill Holton
Every day, over 2 billion photos are shared across Facebook, Instagram,
Messenger, and WhatsApp. And that number is growing ever larger as mobile
phones, selfie sticks, consumer drones, and other devices make taking and
sharing photos and videos easier and more fun. Unfortunately, participating
in more image-based social interactions poses obvious challenges for people
who are blind or severely visually impaired, leading many to feel frustrated
and excluded because they cannot fully participate in conversations sparked
by photos others have posted.
In the April 2015 issue of
<http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw160402> AccessWorld , we spoke
with Facebook Accessibility Team founder Jeff Wieland and accessibility
engineer Ramya Sethuraman about the social network's ongoing commitment to
accessibility. At the time, one of Facebook's latest accessibility features
was the Dynamic Alt Text Generator, which offered some accessibility to
photos and videos by gathering all the metadata a user supplies and
combining it to generate a caption that tells a more complete story.
Recently, Facebook took an interesting new tack, replacing the Dynamic Alt
Text Generator with a more powerful feature called Automatic Alternative
Text, which is currently available on both their iOS and Android apps.
"Automatic Alternative Text (AAT) is a major step towards creating equal
access to information, demonstrating just how much we care about our
commitment to connecting everyone," says Wieland, who arranged a question
and answer session with one of the newest members of the Facebook
Accessibility Team, information scientist and project lead Shaomei Wu.
AW: Can you begin by describing a bit of the groundwork behind your project?
Wu: Certainly. We've spent the last few years diving into how people use
screen readers on Facebook--in fact, we did a study on it. One of our most
fascinating findings is that people [using screen readers] post, comment,
and like photos as much as people who use Facebook without screen readers.
In a second study we conducted, we gathered more insights about the specific
challenges blind people face, and the strategies they use to interact with
visual content. One thing we heard again and again during these interviews
is that people often don't describe their photos, which makes it very hard
for those without vision to participate in the conversations around them.
Hearing these frustrations inspired my team to spend a year trying to solve
this problem. Like most product teams at Facebook, our team is very small
and a lot of employees volunteered their time and expertise to build a
better product.
AW: What is Automatic Alternative Text?
Wu: Facebook's Automatic Alt Text technology processes images uploaded to
Facebook. The technology is based on a neural network that has billions of
parameters and is trained with millions of examples. Each advancement in
object recognition technology means that the Facebook Accessibility team
will be able to make technology even more accessible for more people.
AW: How does Automatic Alternative Text work?
Wu: To generate a description for a photo, Automatic Alternative Text uses
object recognition to get a list of candidate tags--such as "pizza," "dog,"
or "child"--and filter them by their confidence. Here are some of the items
that can be identified by our system:
* Transportation: car, boat, airplane, bicycle, train, road,
motorcycle, bus
* Nature: outdoor, mountain, tree, snow, sky, ocean, water, beach,
wave, sun, grass
* Sports: tennis, swimming, stadium, basketball, baseball, golf
* Food: ice cream, sushi, pizza, dessert, coffee
* A person's appearance: baby, eyeglasses, beard, smiling, jewelry,
shoes
* And, of course, selfie!
While this technology is still nascent, tapping its current capabilities to
describe photos is a huge step toward providing our visually impaired
community the same benefits and enjoyment that everyone else gets from
photos.
AW: Do you recognize every uploaded image or only those that have been
accessed by someone using a screen reader?
Wu: Facebook's object recognition technology processes all images uploaded
to Facebook, but currently we only generate automatic alt text for photos
that are viewed by screen reader users on Facebook iOS and Android apps. We
will be extending this feature to the web, so screen reader users will be
able to view the automatic alt text. It will be placed within the standard
alt text, so [people who don't use] screen readers won't see it unless they
check out the HTML source of the page.
AW: Are these recognized images available on all of Facebook's various
platforms and services?
Wu: Currently they are only available on Facebook, and only for those using
either the iOS or Android mobile app. We are planning to implement AAT on
Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp sometime in the near future.
AW: Speaking of the future, what are the future plans for Automatic
Alternative Text? Where do you hope to be in one to three years?
Wu: We are working toward allowing touch recognition of an image. Say, for
example, the AAT announces: "This picture may include three desks and a
window." A Facebook user could slide a finger around the screen to get a
more precise layout. The three desks are beside one another on the left and
the window is on the right, the user may discover. We also hope to train the
AI to provide a natural description of the photo just as a sighted person
might offer a blind friend. Eventually, we'd love to get to a place where
people who are blind can get a more complete sense what's in his or her
viewfinder before they snap a photo to share, and ask questions about a
posted image, or even a video--questions like "what kind of car is in the
picture?" and the AI will answer them.
Comment on this article.
_______________________________________________
ATI (Adaptive Technology Inc.)
A special interest affiliate of the Missouri Council of the Blind
http://moblind.org/membership/affiliates/adaptive_technology
