Facebook enlists AI to help blind users enjoy photos

The so-called "automatic alt text" generates a description of a photo using advancements in object recognition technology. People using screen readers on their iOS devices will hear a range of items a photo may feature as they swipe past the vast array of snaps on Facebook. In the past, people with visual impairments could only hear the name of the person who shared the photo, followed by the term "photo" when they came across an image in their News Feed. "This is possible because of Facebook's object recognition technology, which is based on a neural network that has billions of parameters and is trained with millions of examples," the company said in a statement. The current list of concepts covers a range of things that can be present in photos, including people's appearance, and pictures of nature, transportation, sports and food.