Microsoft Edge Now Auto-Generates Alt Text For Images

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Microsoft Edge Now Auto-Generates Alt Text For Images

engine

2:58 pm on Mar 18, 2022 (gmt 0)

Microsoft has said its Edge Browser, for Windows, Mac and Linux, will auto-generate alt text for images, with the objective of helping users of assistive technology, such as screen readers.

After the user has granted permission, Microsoft Edge will send unlabeled images to Azure Cognitive Services’ Computer Vision API for processing. Most common web image formats are supported (JPEG, PNG, GIF, WEBP, etc.). The Vision API can analyze images and create descriptive summaries in 5 languages, and recognize text inside of images in over 120 languages. Images sent to this service are governed by our Privacy promise.

[blogs.windows.com...]

NickMNS

3:20 pm on Mar 18, 2022 (gmt 0)

After the user has granted permission,

Oh! I didn't realize that user's owned the rights to images displayed on their computers that allowed them to send those images to third parties.

I guess we now need to come up with blocking strategies to prevent Microsoft from stealing our images.

I particularly like the framing of this

with the objective of helping users of assistive technology

Who would want to prevent the visually impaired people from being able to consume our content.

tangor

5:21 am on Mar 21, 2022 (gmt 0)

Another project to justify having that many folks on payroll ... they have to produce SOMETHING!

OTOH, assistive tech is valuable. All too often webmasters don't include alt for their images----too busy chasing ad dollars and creating soft content as rapidly as possible.

engine

11:26 am on Mar 21, 2022 (gmt 0)

If you've ever had to use a screen reader you'll know how valuable this can be.