
Researchers Are Making Memes Accessible to the Blind - kunkelast
https://onezero.medium.com/researchers-are-making-memes-accessible-to-the-blind-46b9ef0550da?source=rss----444d13b52878---4&gi=9e4c6a5e69d8
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michannne
From the article:

> “The stereotypical image we might have of a meme is the image with captions
> at the top and bottom,” says Wark. “But memes have gotten a lot weirder over
> the last few years. Many don’t really have a punchline like a joke does
> [...] “A program that can classify these [memes] with a 92% accuracy rate
> could be extremely useful for meme consumers with visual impairment,” she
> says.

A large part of the memes I see day to day have no text whatsoever, and their
humor comes from the context of the conversation they are being applied to.
Many are simple edits whose meaning I think would be near impossible to convey
through language.

And why memes? They might provide a good set of data for building algorithms
that can truly grasp the context of content while parsing it's meaning, but
most memes require you to be part of an in-group, have knowledge of their
history and their values, and even then, a single meme could be a humorous
homage for one group of people, and a mocking joke for another.

~~~
codeulike
_Why memes?_

They're talking about the memes from a few years ago when you had the same
image always re-used with different text at the top and bottom (Socially
awkward penguin, Business Cat etc). They are exploiting the fact that that the
image is always the same to help OCR the text.

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onorton
Specifically, these are image macros[0]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_macro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_macro)

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leonnoel
Reminds me of TranscribersOfReddit[0] which is a great attempt at trying to
make the web more accessible for all. Reddit posts get cross posted and those
without visual impairments can transcribe the photo. Their bot is also
starting to get pretty good!

[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/TranscribersOfReddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/TranscribersOfReddit)

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imtringued
Maybe it's for the best that they can't see them?

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miki123211
Blind person here. Images are the reason why I don't use social networks much
(and I think I'm better off for it). I mostly use small, private groups on
Facebook, the programming side of Twitter which is somewhat bearable, and HN
which is as accessible as a site can be.

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DoreenMichele
I would rather see Twitter adding accessibility to its GIFs. In disabled
circles, it's common for people to add a descriptor for the GIF, which is
awkward and cuts into a limited character count.

I end up not wanting to participate, then feeling a bit guilty because I'm
handicapped, though I'm not blind.

There should be native support. This shouldn't be an issue. They offer native
support for embedding the GIFs. They should offer native support for the
visually impaired. It shouldn't require a workaround.

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SnarkAsh
I think you can already natively add alt text to images including GIFs, but
need to enable the UI on your account firist:
[https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/picture-
descriptio...](https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/picture-descriptions)

~~~
egfx
From the help page:

Note: Image descriptions cannot be added to GIFs or videos.

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donatj
Doing God’s work.

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not_a_cop75
Except in Europe.

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Funes-
>If you’re visually impaired, most internet memes are inaccessible. _That
needs to change_.

Yeah, memes are _exactly_ what researchers should spend time and resources on,
especially with regards to blind people.

