A group of engineers at Facebook are now working to make the heavily visual site accessible for everyone – including those who can't see.
Matt King and Jeff Wieland, two members of Facebook's accessibility team, are developing software to improve blind users' experiences with the photo-heavy website through object recognition technology.
King, who was declared legally blind as a child, explains that blind users now have the ability to scroll through a news feed or look at a profile as voices read aloud the content in a photo – including who is in it, what they are doing, the background and the colors.
"This is a first step, a baby step, in the right direction towards including the visually impaired in this age of social media," King, 50, tells PEOPLE. "Blind children and teens can be a part of this visual, modern world of media. They don't have to be left out of that now, now everyone is included."
The technology is called automatic alternative text, and while coders are still working to perfect it, the recognition power can identify a variety of things in a photo including food, nature, people playing sports, descriptions (smiling, jewelry, glasses, etc.), means of transportation and, of course, selfies!
They can also hear how many likes and comments a picture has received, while previously, users were only told who posted the photo and who is in it.
Wieland, who heads Facebook's accessibility program, works closely with blind engineers and blind field-testers to perfect the alternative text.
"It's our mission to connect the entire world, which includes people who can't see," Wieland, 32, tells PEOPLE. "So we are working to embed accessibility into our culture here. We are figuring out how to make our site accessible and how to do that well."
King was brought onto the team last year to provide input and to develop coding to improve the development of the technology.
The accessibility engineer has Retinitis Pigmentosa, and experienced a gradual decline of his vision growing up.
"I hated the word blind as a kid, it made me feel different and completely excluded," he says. "I can't even imagine growing up without vision today. I would have felt so left out of the entire social media experience."
"The teen world is so photo-centric, and it's so important not to leave blind children out of it. It's a huge social benefit to be included in the online movement."
King says that before automatic alternative text existed, using Facebook was "so much work" for him.
"Something that would take someone with vision a few minutes, like connecting with people, took me hours," he says. "It was arduous and I kept trying to figure out how it could be better."
"And now, it is!"
The Facebook engineers say they are working every day to improve the technology.
"Our work is the intersection of oral and visual design and engineering," says Wieland. "We are studying the best ways to take a richly visual online experience and have it narrated to a user. The connection is relatively new, and it is always improving."
Their current project focuses on making the Facebook experience for those without vision more interactive – so that users can ask the computer questions about a photo.
"We're working towards that point," says King. "Right now we are focused on making the photo narratives more accurate with rich descriptions, and, hopefully, eventually people will be able to ask about objects in a picture."
King says anyone can try out this new technology on an iOS device. Simply ask Siri to "turn on VoiceOver" (or by going to Settings, General, Accessibility, VoiceOver).
Once enabled, open the Facebook app and scroll through your news feed or to a friend's profile. When you swipe past a picture, the device will read aloud to you.
"Now, everyone can be a part of global visual conversations," says King. "Now, no one has to be left out."
people
0 Comments