Uttar Pradesh State PCS

• 13 Jul 2024

New User Interface for Blind

Why in News?

Recently, Experts from the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Allahabad, in collaboration with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany, have created a tool for blind and visually impaired individuals to create and access chart images.

Key Points

• Blind people can use this tool to search images and understand them with alternative texts (Alt-text) generated by Artificial Intelligence based software.
• The research work discussed in a paper titled 'Alt4 Blind: A User Interface to Simplify Charts Alt-Text Creation' is presented at an international conference on computers helping people with special needs in Linz, Austria.
  • Alt-Text is manually crafted by authors, but this approach frequently results in problems such as oversimplification or overcomplexity.
    • Emerging trends have seen the adoption of AI technology for the generation of Alt-Text.
  • The research presented an online, open-source tool to enhance alt-text writing by using Al image retrieval, making it more engaging.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• AI is defined as the ability of machines and systems to acquire and apply knowledge and to carry out intelligent behaviour.
  • The term "Artificial Intelligence" was coined by John McCarthy, an American computer scientist and cognitive scientist. He was one of the founders of the discipline of AI.
• It includes technologies like machine learning, Deep Learning, Big Data, Neural Networks, Computer vision, Large Language Models etc.
• The ideal characteristic of artificial intelligence is its ability to rationalize and take actions that have the best chance of achieving a specific goal.