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Apple has a video understanding model too. I can't wait to find out what accessibility stuff they'll do with the models. As a blind person, AI has changed my li
by devinprater 10mo ago
Apple has a video understanding model too. I can't wait to find out what accessibility stuff they'll do with the models. As a blind person, AI has changed my life.
- densh 10mo ago> As a blind person, AI has changed my life. Something one doesn't see in news headlines. Happy to see this comment.
- badmonster 10mo agoWhat other accessibility features do you wish existed in video AI models? Real-time vs post-processing?
- devinprater 10mo agoMainly realtime processing. I play video games, and would love to play something like Legend of Zelda and just have the AI going, then ask it "read the menu options as I move between them," and it would speak each menu option as the cursor moves to it. Or when navigating a 3D environment, ask it to describe the surroundings, then ask it to tell me how to get to a place or object, then it guide me to it. That could be useful in real-world scenarios too.
- kulahan 10mo agoWeird question, but have you ever tried text adventures? It seems like it's inherently the ideal option, if you can get your screen reader going.
- devinprater 10mo agoYep, they're nice. There are even online versions.
- tippa123 10mo ago+1 and I would be curious to read and learn more about it.
- joedevon 10mo agoIf you want to see more on this topic, check out (google) the podcast I co-host called Accessibility and Gen. AI.
- moss_dog 10mo agoThanks for the recommendation, just downloaded a few episodes!;
- tippa123 10mo agoHonestly, that’s such a great example of how to share what you do on the interwebs. Right timing, helpful and on topic. Since I’ve listened to several episodes of the podcast, I can confirm it definitely delivers.
- swores 10mo agoA blind comedian / TV personality in the UK has just done a TV show on this subject - I haven't seen it, but here's a recent article about it: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/nov/23/chris-mccausland-seeing-into-the-future-review-disabled-people-tech-bbc https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/nov/23/chris-m...
- latexr 10mo agoHilariously, he beat the other teams in the “Say What You See” round (yes, really) of last year’s Big fat Quiz. No AI involved. https://youtu.be/i5NvNXz2TSE?t=4732 https://youtu.be/i5NvNXz2TSE?t=4732
- swores 10mo agoHaha that's great! I'm not a fan of his (nothing against him, just not my cup of tea when it comes to comedy and mostly not been interested in other stuff he's done), but the few times I have seen him as a guest on shows it's been clear that he's a generally clever person.
- fguerraz 10mo ago> Something one doesn't see in news headlines. I hope this wasn't a terrible pun
- densh 10mo agoNo pun intended but it's indeed an unfortunate choice of words on my part.
- 47282847 10mo agoMy blind friends have gotten used to it and hear/receive it not as a literal “see“ any more. They would not feel offended by your usage.
- devinprater 10mo agoNah, best pun ever!
- kkylin 10mo agoLike many others, I too would very much like to hear about this. I taught our entry-level calculus course a few years ago and had two blind students in the class. The technology available for supporting them was abysmal then -- the toolchain for typesetting math for screen readers was unreliable (and anyway very slow), for braille was non-existent, and translating figures into braille involved sending material out to a vendor and waiting weeks. I would love to hear how we may better support our students in subjects like math, chemistry, physics, etc, that depend so much on visualization.
- WillAdams 10mo agoFor a physical view on this see: https://www.reddit.com/r/openscad/comments/1p6iv5y/christmas_should_be_for_everyone/ https://www.reddit.com/r/openscad/comments/1p6iv5y/christmas... The creator, https://www.reddit.com/user/Mrblindguardian/ https://www.reddit.com/user/Mrblindguardian/ has asked for help a few times in the past (I provided feedback when I could), but hasn't needed to as often of late, presumably due to using one or more LLMs.
- VogonPoetry 10mo agoI did a maths undergrad degree and the way my blind, mostly deaf friend and I communicated was using a stylized version of TeX markup. I typed on a terminal and he read / wrote on his braille terminal. It worked really well.
- kkylin 10mo agoThanks! Did you communicate in "raw" TeX, or was it compiled / encoded for braille? Can you point me at the software you used?
- VogonPoetry 10mo agoYes, mostly raw TeX, just plain ascii - not specially coded for Braille. This was quite a long time ago, mid 1980's, so not long after TeX had started to spread in computer science and maths communities. My friend was using a "Versa Braille" terminal hooked via a serial port to a BBC Micro running a terminal program that I'd written. I cannot completely remember how we came to an understanding of the syntax to use. We did shorten some items because the Versa Braille only had 20 chars per "line". He is still active and online and has a contact page see https://www.foneware.net https://www.foneware.net. I have been a poor correspondent with him - he will not know my HN username. I will try to reach out to him.
- Rover222 10mo ago`Something one doesn't see` - no pun intended
- WarcrimeActual 10mo agoI have to believe you used the word see twice ironically.
- K0balt 10mo agoI must be wrong, but can’t help but harbor a mild suspicion that your use of sight metaphors is not coincidental.
- phyzix5761 10mo agoCan you share some ways AI has changed your life?
- darkwater 10mo agoI guess that auto-generated audio descriptions for (almost?) any video you want is a very, very nice feature for a blind person.
- baq 10mo agoguessing that being able to hear a description of what the camera is seeing (basically a special case of a video) in any circumstances is indeed life changing if you're blind...? take a picture through the window and ask what's the commotion? door closed outside that's normally open - take a picture, tell me if there's a sign on it? etc.
- tippa123 10mo agoMy two cents, this seems like a case where it’s better to wait for the person’s response instead of guessing.
- darkwater 10mo agoFair enough. Anyway I wasn't trying to say what actually changed GP's life, I was just expressing my opinion on what video models could potentially bring as an improvement to a blind person.
- nkmnz 10mo agoMy two cents, this seems like a comment it should be up to the OP to make instead of virtue signaling.
- tippa123 10mo ago> Can you share some ways AI has changed your life? A question directed to GP, directly asking about their life and pointing this out is somehow virtue signalling, OK.
- kruxigt 10mo ago[dead]
- javcasas 10mo agoFinally good news about the AI doing something good for the people.
- p1esk 10mo agoI’m not blind and AI has been great for me too.
- majkinetor 10mo ago[flagged]
- talesfromearth 10mo agoThe smiley at the end doesn’t hide how awful your comment is.
- majkinetor 10mo agoSo serious... you should relax a bit and work up on your humor reception/understanding (smiley intentionally left out this time)
- Workaccount2 10mo agoPeople need to understand that a lot of angst around AI comes from AI enabling people to do things that they formally needed to go through gatekeepers for. The angst is coming from the gatekeepers. AI has been a boon for me and my non-tech job. I can pump out bespoke apps all day without having to get bent on $5000/yr/usr engineering software packages. I have a website for my side business that looks and functions professionally and was done with a $20 monthly AI subscription instead of a $2000 contractor.
- MyFirstSass 10mo agoI highly doubt "pumping out bespoke apps all day" is possible yet besides 100% boilerplate, and when possible then no good for any other purpose than enshittifiying the web, and at that point not profitable because everyone can do it. I use AI daily as a senior coder for search and docs, and when used for prototyping you still need to be a senior coder to go from say 60% boilerplate to 100% finished app/site/whatever unless it's incredibly simple.
- GeekyBear 10mo agoOne cool feature they added for deaf parents a few years ago was a notification when it detects a baby crying.
- embedding-shape 10mo agoIs that something you actually need AI for though? A device with a sound sensor and something that shines/vibrate a remote device when it detects sound above some threshold would be cheaper, faster detection, more reliable, easier to maintain, and more.
- jfindper 10mo ago>Is that something you actually need AI for though? Need? Probably not. I bet it helps though (false positives, etc.) >would be cheaper, faster detection, more reliable, easier to maintain, and more. Cheaper than the phone I already own? Easier to maintain than the phone that I don't need to do maintenance on? From a fun hacking perspective, a different sensor & device is cool. But I don't think it's any of the things you mentioned for the majority of people.
- evilduck 10mo agoBut your solution costs money in addition to the phone they already own for other purposes. And multiple things can make loud noises in your environment besides babies; differentiating between a police siren going by outside and your baby crying is useful, especially if the baby slept through the siren. The same arguments were said for blind people and the multitude of one-off devices that smartphones replaced, OCR to TTS, color detection, object detection in photos/camera feeds, detecting what denomination US bills are, analyzing what's on screen semantically vs what was provided as accessible text (if any was at all), etc. Sure, services for the blind would come by and help arrange outfits for people, and audiobook narrators or braille translator services existed, and standalone devices to detect money denominations were sold, but a phone can just do all of that now for much cheaper. All of these accessibility AI/ML features run on-device, so the knee-jerk anti-AI crowd's chief complaints are mostly baseless anyways. And for the blind and the deaf, carrying all the potential extra devices with you everywhere is burdensome. The smartphone is a minimal and common social and physical burden.
- andy_ppp 10mo agoI wonder if there's anything that can help blind people to navigate the world more easily - I guess in the future AR Glasses won't just be for the sighted but allow people without vision to be helped considerably. It really is both amazing and terrifying the future we're heading towards.
- shagie 10mo agoFrom a couple years ago... https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/garage/wall-of-fame/seeing-ai/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/garage/wall-of-fame/seeing-a... https://youtu.be/R2mC-NUAmMk https://youtu.be/R2mC-NUAmMk https://youtu.be/DybczED-GKE https://youtu.be/DybczED-GKE ... and that was 10 years ago. I'm curious for what it could do now.
- xnx 10mo agohttps://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.accessibility.reveal&hl=en_US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
- asadotzler 10mo agoAURA Vision for blind and low vision people has been doing this for years. Be My Eyes has been doing this for years without AI. Meta Ray-Bans can do this. There's nothing new coming soon that hasn't already been available for a while, only refinements.
- astrange 10mo agoThis is an area where a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind quite easily. If an AI is telling you what it's looking at, it suddenly means a lot more once it… knows what it's looking at.
- whatsupdog 10mo ago> As a blind person, AI has changed my life. I know this is a low quality comment, but I'm genuinely happy for you.
- basilgohar 10mo agoI'm only commenting because I absolutely love this thread. It's an insight into something I think most of us are quite (I'm going to say it...) blind to in our normal experiences with daily life, and I find immense value in removing my ignorance about such things.
- robbomacrae 10mo agoHi Devin and other folks, I'm looking for software developers who are blind or hard of sight as there is a tool I'm building that I think might be of interest to them (it's free and open source). If you or anyone you know is interested in trying it please get in touch through my email.
- mycall 10mo agoI'm in the middle of updating a new public transit app my team wrote in Flutter and want it to flow better for blind people. Would you rather use AI chat session with realtime information or go through the screens with VoiceOver/TalkBack controls? What about trust and hallucinations? Any tips you can give?