Hi,
By the way, any Android users on here, don't get excited. Facebook haven't got
to us yet, it's only on iOS. So we'll get it when it's working properly
<Smile>.
All the best
Steve
-----Original Message-----
From: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of ;
Eleanor burke
Sent: 06 April 2016 17:01
To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [access-uk] Re: Identity 2016: Facebook lets blind people 'see' its
photos - BBC News
well I had an instance where the photograph was text and it simply said text. I
agree with you at the moment it's a lot of nonsense to have to listen to that I
could do with out. I am not knocking it I am just thinking it is not ready yet
to be used meaningfully.
On 6 Apr 2016, at 16:50, Ruthgillespie <ruthgillespie25@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:** To leave the list, click on the immediately-following link:-
But if the pic is text it doesn't seem to read that. The info it describes
from graphics like you've said only adds more boring listening to useless
stuff.
Regards
Ruth 😉😁
Sent from my iPhone
On 6 Apr 2016, at 08:57, Gordon Keen (Redacted sender "gordonkeen" for DMARC)
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi
It works for me on my i-pad, you are using an Apple product aren’t you?
As long as voiceover is enabled on your device than any image will announce
the automatically generated alt tag, at the moment it is fairly non specific
so it says something like image contains sky, water , countryside.
If a person is in the image it will say person and if there is more than one
it say how many and even said on one image that the person was smiling.
As this is based on artifical intellegence it is hoped that the descriptions
will become more specific as it learns.
Watch out for an announcement from Microsoft soon.
On 6 Apr 2016, at 00:02, Amro Bilal <info@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I’ve read about this feature somewhere before but still can’t figure how to
use/activate it. If it is supposed to work automatically, then it is not
working on my account. I use Facebook the mobile site and I wonder if this
could be the reason it is not working.
Best,
Amro
From: Gordon Keen
Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2016 10:16 AM
To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [access-uk] Identity 2016: Facebook lets blind people 'see'
its photos - BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/disability-35881779
Identity 2016: Facebook lets blind people 'see' its photos
Visually impaired Facebook users try its new AI technology As the
internet becomes dominated by images, Facebook is launching a system which
can "read" photos and tell visually impaired people what appears in them.
The internet is changing. From a medium based almost entirely on text, it
is now becoming increasingly picture-led. An estimated 1.8 billion images
are uploaded every day to social networks such as Twitter, Instagram and
Facebook.
Good news for aspiring photographers, bad news for blind or partially
sighted users who often have no way of telling what is in an image -
despite the available modern assistive technologies.
But a new service from Facebook, being launched on Tuesday, is attempting
to remedy that.
<attachment.gif> Facebook
(From left) Facebook's Matt King, Jeffrey Wieland and Shaomei Wu
have worked on the new AI technology Blind people use sophisticated
navigation software called screenreaders to make computers usable. They
turn the contents of the screen into speech output or braille. But they can
only read text and can't "read" pictures.
Using artificial intelligence (AI), Facebook's servers can now decode and
describe images uploaded to the site and provide them in a form that can be
read out by a screenreader.
The man behind the development is Matt King, a Facebook engineer who lost
his sight as a result of retinitis pigmentosa - a condition which destroys
the light sensitive cells in the retina.
"On Facebook, a lot of what happens is extremely visual," King says. "And,
as somebody who's blind, you can really feel like you're left out of the
conversation, like you're on the outside."
The technology that King and his team have developed uses Facebook's
in-house object-recognition software to decipher what an image contains. It
has been trained to recognise items such as food and vehicles.
<attachment.gif> Facebook
"Our artificial intelligence has advanced to the point where it's practical
for us to try to get computers to describe pictures in a meaningful way,"
King says.
"This is in its very early stages, but it's helping us move in the
direction of that goal of including every single person who wants to
participate in the conversation."
The system currently describes images in fairly basic terms such as: "There
are two people in this image and they are smiling."
However, Facebook says it has now trained its software to recognise about
80 familiar objects, from cars and trains, to food and settings such as
mountain, water and beach, and sports such as tennis, swimming and golf. It
adds the descriptions as alternative text, or alt text, on each photo. The
more images it scans, the more sophisticated the software will become.
Last month, Twitter added a similar function which enables users to
manually add their own descriptive text to images. Although the
descriptions may be better, it requires users to actively choose to do it,
whereas Facebook's new system automatically tags every photo.
<attachment.gif> Facebook
King and Facebook would like the system to go one step further and use face
recognition to identify people in a picture by name with help from their
database of users, but others are resisting the idea on privacy grounds.
For King, it is a matter of principle - he says sighted and
visually-impaired people should have equal access to the content posted
online. Sighted people know who is in many of the photos they see, so blind
people should also be allowed that same privilege, he believes.
"I feel I have a right to that information," he says. "I am asking for
information that is already available to other people to be revealed to me.
So I see it as a matter of fairness."
Jeff Wieland, head of the Facebook accessibility team, says the social
networking site is investing in accessibility and devising strategies for
different communities, to allow them to engage with it.
He says the site is "going to have dedicated teams thinking about how to
get all these different communities on-board and connecting with each
other. That is the chance for us to be equalisers and to really empower the
world".
Hear more from Matt King in Default World, first broadcast on the BBC World
Service on 2 April as part of the Identity season. An edited version will
be broadcast as an Analysis documentary on BBC Radio 4.
Follow @BBCOuch on Twitter and on Facebook or email ouch@xxxxxxxxx
<attachment.gif> As people become increasingly connected and more
mobile, the BBC is exploring how identities are changing.
Learn more about the BBC's Identity season or join the discussion on
Twitter using the hashtag #BBCIdentity.
More Identity 2016 features:
The nation in love with country music Camel racing, a market worth
millions Why Nigerians melt their gold jewellery in Dubai
** To leave the list, click on the immediately-following link:-
** [mailto:access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe]
** If this link doesn't work then send a message to:
** access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
** and in the Subject line type
** unsubscribe
** For other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the
** immediately-following link:-
** [mailto:access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq]
** or send a message, to
** access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the Subject:- faq
** To leave the list, click on the immediately-following link:-
** [mailto:access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe]
** If this link doesn't work then send a message to:
** access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
** and in the Subject line type
** unsubscribe
** For other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the
** immediately-following link:-
** [mailto:access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq]
** or send a message, to
** access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the Subject:- faq
