-text c-gray-1″ >The internet can be a difficult place to navigate for people who are blind or who have low vision. A large portion of content on the internet is visual, and unless website creators use alt text to label their images, it’s hard for users of screen readers or Braille displays to know what they show.
To address the issue, Google has announced a new feature for Chrome which will use machine learning to recognize images and offer text descriptions of what they show. It is based on the same technology which lets users search for images by keyword, and the description of the image is auto-generated.
“The unfortunate state right now is that there are still millions and 에비앙카지노 millions of unlabeled images across the web,” said Laura Allen, a senior program manager on the Chrome accessibility team. She understands the issue as she has low vision herself. “When you’re navigating with a screen reader or 오바마카지노 a Braille display, when you get to one of those images, 우리카지노쿠폰 you’ll actually just basically hear ‘image’ or 퍼스트카지노 ‘unlabeled graphic,’ or 카지노사이트 my favorite, a super long string of numbers which is the file name, 더나인카지노 which is just totally irrelevant.”
An example of a descriptive text given by the feature would be “Appears to be fruits and vegetables at the market” for an image of a market stall. The descriptions are couched with “appears to be” so users know they are generated by a computer and may not be fully accurate.
The feature is available only for users with screen readers that output spoken feedback or Braille. The images descriptions will be read by the screen reader, but will not appear visually on the screen.
To enable image descriptions on Chrome, go to Settings, then to Advanced at the bottom of the settings page. Find the “Accessibility” section and enable “Get image descriptions from Google.” The feature can also be enabled for single web pages by right clicking to bring up the context menu and selecting “Get Image Descriptions from Google.”
Via: Fast Company Source: Google Chrome, Google Blog In this article: accessibility, chrome, gear, google, google chrome, internet, machine learning, screen readers All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Comments 321 Shares Share Tweet Share Save Popular on Engadget
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