Digital imagery is pervasive today. More than a billion images per day are produced and uploaded to social media sites, with many more embedded within websites, apps, digital documents, and eBooks. Engaging with digital imagery has become fundamental to participating in contemporary society, including education, the professions, e-commerce, civics, entertainment, and social interactions. However, most digital images remain inaccessible to the 39 million people worldwide who are blind. AI and computer vision technologies hold the potential to increase image accessibility for people who are blind, through technologies like automated image descriptions.
The speakers share their perspectives as people who are both technology experts and are blind, providing insight into future directions for the field of computer vision for describing images and videos for people who are blind.