Facebook, the world's largest social media network, has unveiled its latest AI-powered tool. Called Automatic Alternative Text, the system is a supplement to Screen Reader software, which is utilized by visually impaired individuals when they use a computer. What makes the AI tool so special, however, is that one of the engineers who played a big role in the project is visually impaired himself.
Matt King, an avid athlete and an engineer, is blind due to a disease which compromised his retinas. Despite his handicap, he nevertheless pursued his career in engineering, eventually becoming Facebook's first blind engineer. His mission? To make Facebook far more accessible and enjoyable for individuals just like him.
In a presentation unveiling the social media network's new feature, King had the lights turned off, giving his audience an idea of how his world feels. As he tapped from one picture to the next using a Screen Reader, a mechanical voice read out the contents of the page, describing the photos and their contents.
Unlike the company's previous tool for the visually impaired, Automatic Alternative Text is a tool which enables users to get a pretty good idea of the contents of a photo. Previously, the firm's tool simply read the word "photo" without describing its contents.
Thus, even if the tool is quite basic, describing a picture of a pizza pie with the statement "Image may contain pizza," it is nonetheless a significant step forward toward making Facebook far more accessible to anyone, regardless of physical limitations.
What makes Automatic Alternative Text truly stand out, however, is the fact that it is a tool powered by artificial intelligence. Thus, even if the system is now only able to identify basic categories, it would learn how to identify more specific objects over time. Over time, an object that the system would identify as a "car" would be classified as a "Tesla Model S," for example.
The world has more than 285 million visually impaired people. With the introduction of the new tool, Facebook just made itself one of the best ways to reach that demographic in a very welcome manner. In a lot of ways, the Automatic Alternative Text tool might very well change the way social media is enjoyed by the visually impaired forever.
The tool is currently only available for iOS devices. A mass rollout for users across other platforms is set to follow soon.
