Visually impaired people to ‘see’ pictures on Facebook

Facebook has created a new tool that will enable the visually impaired people to ‘see’ the pictures that are being posted online.

The new tool can describe different pictures that are uploaded on the site. This will be done in such a way that the pictures will be in a form that can be read by a screen reader.

A screen reader is a software that aids visually impaired people while using the computer. The software turns content on the screen of the computer into speech output or Braille.

According to BBC, the man who is said to be behind this creation is Matt King, a Facebook Engineer who is visually impaired.

However, in an interview with USA Today, Jeff Wieland, Facebook’s head of accessibility stated: “We really want to start with a set of concepts that frequently appear in photos that add a lot of value to the narrative of the photo.”

As per now, the new tool can describe different things from different categories such as transport- car, boat bicycle, food such as ice cream, pizza, dessert, coffee, the environment such as –outdoor, mountain, tree snow, sports such as- tennis, swimming, basketball.

“The new tool currently describes images in fairly basic terms such as there are two people in this image and they are smiling,” said King.

“This is in its very early stages, but it’s helping us move in the direction of that goal of including every single person who wants to participate in the conversation.”