I figured I'd put this here because you know, Voiceover accessibility advocacy but if mods feel it deemed somewhere else feel free but with that out of the way, let's rant! Image description in the latest IOS update is a joke. Why? I have a rehearsal I'm attending for a gig and the person who sent me the set list had it in a photo and I thought to myself, hey, Voiceover's image description features will work nicely here because I didn't feel like feeding it through a third party source but nope? Wanna know why? Because image content was marked sensitive. I can get the summary of the image but I ask it for the full list so I can pit it against the youtube playlist I got and VO just up and says, this image has sensitive content. and I'm like I don't give two shits let me view it again! Tried and Still no. Why does apple think it's such a good idea to take control and have us not view certain content, especially, if it's wait for it, a list, of songs! That's it! Just a list, of songs and their keys! Sorry but if sighted people can view whatever they want image wise we can't do the same thing? I'm just about getting sick and tired of censorship round these parts! I'm about to send a big hefty complaint to apple, because the one thing I found image description useful, I can't even use. Nevermind all the hype we got out of the thing. Oh and I don't buy the whole parents get offended easily tactic cause you can pick and choose what you wanna view. Please for the love of God, if apple is gunna do this, make it a toggle and stop telling us what we can and cannot view. We're not that special and I'm getting tired of us being treated differently because of it! And all of this for what? A list of songs. That's just it! How much more is apple going to block us from viewing before we all just go up and arms and say, this is enough! For all I know, this image description feature is totally, useless! I do not have time, sharing it through a third party if I don't have to and this was going to be easier and more efficient but nooooooooooo.
Comments
Re: Extremists
Yes, Holger Fiallo, adults are not children and do not need Apple as a parental controller.
And Bear must deal with Bears dysphoria as Bear needs, not as Apple wants. Still not anything that could be considered adult content. Perhaps... that could be a different angle on the discrimination.
bigots and hypocrites
So, let's recap: there is Apple -and AI companies- which decide to silence adult-only contents, so-called "sensitive images" etc. Then there are politicians, including important ones, who hate-speech about underrepresented people, or even latinos, black, and so on, and they get applauses. This is the world we are living in.
Let alone Grok, which lets you get even rude words if you want to. It also permitted Anna Frank's pictures modified with nazi symbols on her. But then if you say the same rude words towards Musk in his platforms, they'll try to silence you in a way or another.
I am firmly against nazi, racist, homophobic, ableist etc. contents. But no Internet platform, AI, or algorithm should prevent you to read something. You should have the possibility to filter contents by yourself. The example is on Mastodon's web interface. There is a good filter option, where you can put unwanted keywords and you'll get a content warning, or those posts with unwanted words, could even be hidden.
The truth is that people feels less and less confident with individual responsibility whatever it means.
For what concerns me, racists, homophobics, nostalgic of fascism and nazism, just scream to the moon. I filter them permanently. But not all social network platforms support self-created filters. Big tech corporation maybe think we (blind or not), need to be hyper-controlled for them to pretend to protect us.
My new angle seems to have been lost
So let me reiterate the point: image descriptions actually help, rather than hinder, the reporting of truly disgusting or unlawful images. Speaking for myself, but I hope for others too, if I innocently downloaded something indecent and apple described it to me as such I would as a minimum delete it and, if necessary and to the extent possible, I might take further action up to and including reportage to the police. If you don't tell me what the image is - if, in other words, you say it's sensitive content and leave it at that - well, then, I will be none the wiser. I do not want indecent images on my phone, nor do I want (even inadvertently) to go along wiht the circulation of them. I can't do anything about it, however, without descriptions.
Re: bigots and hypocrites
didn't grock get into some controversy because of like some kind of AI child pornography genneration that people were doing on there platforms and stuff. I know a lot of people are talking about that that's why I don't really use it. I use ChatGPT or Google Gemini.
Re: My new angle seems to have been lost
100%
like idk, i guess i'm trying to understand ware there coming from but at the end of the day i just find it so stupid. sencership in genneral just sucks
Verification
Lets not forget either that certainly in the UK and in other places more and more that we have to prove we are 18 years old and therefore an adult. So at that point we should make the decissions as to what we want to know about. I get it for children obviously, but at the end of the day if I'm 18 or older and Apple think I'm to stupid to work out what is right or wrong then there isn't much hope for any of us.
Re: My new angle seems to have been lost
I totally hear what you are saying, Bingo. I don't download images to my iPhone exactly because of that, well, they might have some other kinds of contamination too.
Apple is censoring my own pictures that are cute or even sexy in a silly way, but not at all dirty or adult content worthy. But that's for another reply.
Re: bigots and hypocrites
As you say, "Big tech corporation maybe think we (blind or not), need to be hyper-controlled for them to pretend to protect us."
I have to point out in other blind subs on other social media, that blind is not the only aspect of myself that makes me a minority in this world and might be the least of my difficulties at times. That AI description is my best, private form of a clear mirror, for whatever reason I need to look into it, or an eye to the world. Ya, I can go ask Gemini or Seeing AI, so what really is Apple doing this for, and why in such a haphazard way? Perhaps, this is just utter sloppiness and laziness on Apples part, a failure to conduct quality control for their adaptive section of their business.
Elena Brescacin
FYI, Smart picture does not do so, if you have a picture it describe it. It is part of JAWS for windows.
Re: Elena Brescacin
google gemini talkback descriptions i dont think have this issue as well
Re: bigots and hypocrites
Yes it was allowing users to easily generate pornographic images of children I believe. But I still see that sort of thing as a platform problem. It shouldn't be allowing that to be generated, then Twitter, or Instagram or wherever should not be allowing it to be posted. But once it is up there and on a platform it's not up to VoiceOver to police it, in the same way as it's not up to my iPhone screen to police it.
As was said before maybe I would want a chance to report it as offensive at that point.
Having said that, I could see that adding a parental control on a phone that would use AI to blur inappropriate images for children might make some sense. But in that case, VoiceOver would describe the image as being blurry so it still isn't something that belongs in the way of accessibility. It is just infantilism. I remember the RNIB (I think) did some kind of marketing thing whose prominent message was something like "blind people have sex too, you know".imagined that.)
I still hope that this is version 1 from Apple and that they are just treading cautiously, and hopefully once they get some feedback they will acknowledge that this isn't what we want. But I doubt it will ever be describing anything remotely sexual in nature.
But if we take away how the implementation is broken, Censorship is not unusual for AI image description. My wife and I were acting like children when we went to a park that had all these statues of Greek Gods and Goddesses. My Meta glasses would absolutely not even acknowledge that one of the statues was of a topless lady. It could describe her hair and face, and the cloth draped around her torso, but it would not even tell me anything at all about the area in-between. Similarly for a status of Atlas where he was completely nude it would not really give me any details at all. Admittedly we were just asking for a laugh (yes we have a combined age of over 100) but it still seems ridiculous that we were walking in a public place and it's fine for adults and children alike to be seeing these things, but whatever you do, don't let the blind man know about it.
No doubt I could have asked Grok to describe it and it would have sounded like a Marks and Spencer advert but I wasn't that committed to the cause. (Sorry for anyone either too young or outside the UK for that reference)
Re: bigots and hypocrites
grrate, now im wanting to serch up what that add is. thanks.
but na i completely aggree with you here
Re: bigots and hypocrites
grrate, now im wanting to serch up what that add is. thanks.
but na i completely aggree with you here
Reminder
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My thoughts
I don't think the image description features should be so restrictive. Why they have the sensitive content for random things is beyond me. If this were happening to sighted users, apple would immediately change it. ALso if people really want this type of restriction put it as a setting like others here have said. This arbitrary sensitive content restriction is absolutely not needed at all in it's current form
Re: My thoughts
And the fact that we have to fight for this in 2026 is ridiculous and atrocious!