Thousands of Czechs can praise Google for a feature that will improve their lives

You may think that there are many applications or services that Google improves the lives of many of us in some way. So why should any other function be more exceptional and worth such a title? The point is that it is about a tool for the visually impairedwho are doing worse at working with computers and cell phones. There are between 70 and 100 thousand of them in the Czech Republic, and this novelty can really help them literally improve life: Google announced a few hours ago that a special feature for reading aloud captions automatically on images on the Internet has learned ten new languages. AND Czech is among them.

Don’t you understand much? Never mind, we’ll explain. Any image placed on the Internet can have its own classic caption (usually based on the title) as well as alternative text, the so-called alt. It is these alts that help Analyze through keywords what is roughly in the image. The photo from the beach will bear, for example, words such as sea, beach, water, sun or summer. The average user usually doesn’t use alt in any way, but it is robots designed for loud reading for the visually impaired that rely on them. And when there is no alt image (it is usually entered manually and billions of images do not have it), the software and the disadvantaged user are unlucky. Unless Google Chrome and its built-in tool for automatic label generation. This is exactly what the newly announced Czech concerns.

The American giant introduced this function in 2019 and at first, of course, in English. Gradually other world languages ​​were added and now our mother tongue has also been used. What does this mean for visually impaired users here or their friends who help them operate smart devices? In the Google Chrome menu (three dots in the top right)> Settings> Advanced Settings (in the left menu)> Accessibility, a toggle will soon appear for this feature. Once turned on, the browser will be able to read aloud keywords to pictureswhich are not provided by their authors. Similarly, this option is turned on in the Android system, where the classic Google application also assists.

Behind the function is artificial intelligence and an algorithm based on machine learning data. Of course, Google reminds us that the analysis is not perfect, which is to be reckoned with. At the same time, they claim that the system handles photos of nature best and is not adapted to drawings, comics or screenshots, for example. Images are uploaded to Google’s servers for analysis, but are not stored there.

How many visually impaired people do you know? And do they use similar features?

Zdroj: Google