Alt Text or meta description of an image or video is a blessing for people with visual impairments and for those who cannot see/understand a picture as it is and need an audio-visual guide that describes the picture to them. Facebook introduced the Automatic Alt Text system back in 2016, and since then, there have been many advancements in the field of AI-generated image captions.
Now, Facebook’s AI image generation models are getting more advanced as they will soon start giving detailed descriptions about images, people in them doing various activities, and even descriptions of certain key objects in the image will also be available.
For instance, there is an image of a man standing in front of their house in a mountain area. Currently, the descriptive text about this image would give little and to the point information. However, with the help of the new system, the description would be more detailed and would be something like: “A person is standing in front of their house with mountains at the back, a cow grazing on their right side, with lush green fields and a clear blue sky.” This is just an example of how explanative these new AI-generated alt texts for images are likely to be.
Anyone who can see clearly and wants to know the intricate details of an image can enlarge it or view it closely. But people who have visual disabilities cannot do this. So, they can opt for the new “generate detailed image description” command. It can be activated by pressing long on an image on Facebook for Android, while it is a custom action on iOS.
This new detailed description is soon to come for testing on Facebook. Instagram may receive this feature sooner though. Another thing that the developers are focusing on is to keep the descriptions extremely simple so that they can be easily translated into other languages that both Facebook and Instagram support.
Alt-text descriptions are usually added by the photographers or the publications that post images on the social network. But normal people do not really care for this feature, although it makes the social platforms far more accessible for people with different types of visual impairments. So, Facebook started generating captions for the help of these people automatically, and now that it is going to get much better and far more descriptive than before, it is surely going to make a lot of people with visual issues very happy.
Read next: Study shows brands that pause Facebook advertising are still doing good
Now, Facebook’s AI image generation models are getting more advanced as they will soon start giving detailed descriptions about images, people in them doing various activities, and even descriptions of certain key objects in the image will also be available.
For instance, there is an image of a man standing in front of their house in a mountain area. Currently, the descriptive text about this image would give little and to the point information. However, with the help of the new system, the description would be more detailed and would be something like: “A person is standing in front of their house with mountains at the back, a cow grazing on their right side, with lush green fields and a clear blue sky.” This is just an example of how explanative these new AI-generated alt texts for images are likely to be.
Anyone who can see clearly and wants to know the intricate details of an image can enlarge it or view it closely. But people who have visual disabilities cannot do this. So, they can opt for the new “generate detailed image description” command. It can be activated by pressing long on an image on Facebook for Android, while it is a custom action on iOS.
This new detailed description is soon to come for testing on Facebook. Instagram may receive this feature sooner though. Another thing that the developers are focusing on is to keep the descriptions extremely simple so that they can be easily translated into other languages that both Facebook and Instagram support.
Alt-text descriptions are usually added by the photographers or the publications that post images on the social network. But normal people do not really care for this feature, although it makes the social platforms far more accessible for people with different types of visual impairments. So, Facebook started generating captions for the help of these people automatically, and now that it is going to get much better and far more descriptive than before, it is surely going to make a lot of people with visual issues very happy.
Read next: Study shows brands that pause Facebook advertising are still doing good
