Facebook to Help Blind Users See Photos

Facebook. By: Xioubin Low. CC BY-SA 2.0

In an audacious attempt to fortify its position as the leader of Social Media, Facebook has announced a new feature that will allow its blind users to “see” their photos. While this statement seems contradictory in itself, Mark Zuckerberg went on to explain this concept in his status.

According to Zuckerberg, the new program will use the Advanced AI technology to let the blind users enjoy the world of Facebook. This Program will recognize the faces and objects that will appear on the timeline. After that, according to the social media activity of the user, it will read out the descriptions in a loud voice. However, before the users enamor themselves with this feature, they would have to enable the “Voice Over” Feature.

Like many of the Facebook features that are still in a developing stage, this feature is only available in English. While its previous features have inadvertently offended the target audience – like a blast in Pakistan for which Facebook asked people in as far as America to undergo safety check, Facebook is making sure this time not to offend its customers.

As a result, this program has been given the name of “automatic alternative text”. Currently, this program has a vocabulary of around 100 words.

Talking about the history behind its inception and Facebook says that it was a request from one of their visibly impaired users. Thus, acting upon the suggestion of the user, Facebook decided to give this program a go.

Currently, more than 2-Billion Photos are uploaded on the Facebook network every day which also comprises the likes of Instagram and WhatsApp. Thus, as obvious, photos contribute massively to the ever increasing audience of Facebook.

One of the limitation regarding this app is its inability to run on Android and Computer. The version which Facebook has introduced is only compatible with iPhone. Thus, if you don’t own an iPhone, you might have to wait some time before getting your hands on this program.