Not getting photo descriptions in Photos app

By peter, 16 July, 2024

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

In the past, when I scrolled through my list of photos in the Photos app, Voiceover would give me a description of each photo.

Now that is no longer happening. Sometimes it happens sporatically, but most times not.

I have "Image Descriptions / Photos" turned on in my Voiceover settings.I have also tried turning on screen recognition for the Photos app, but that doesn't seem to help either.

Oh yes, I've also rebooted.

I am running iOS 17.5.1 on an iPhone 15 Pro.

What could be the issue? It seems this used to work in the past.

--Pete

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Comments

By Holger Fiallo on Wednesday, July 17, 2024 - 13:21

Sometimes that happens to me. I just deal with it. I use be my eyes or email to my PC and use jaws to get a great description.

By peter on Wednesday, July 17, 2024 - 13:21

I am trying to sort photos into different albums so that I can quickly find them.

Besides the fact that Voiceover is no longer automatically describing photos as I flick through them (as described in another recent post of mine), I am wondering if anyone has a robust method for sorting photos from the Library list into different folders.

Several issues I am encountering:

1. Since Voiceover is no longer giving me image descriptions (using iOS 17.5.1 and an iPhone 15 Pro), I am using Be My Eyes to describe each photo as I go through the list. Unfortunately, after I close Be My Eyes, focus does not land on the recently described photo. So then I have to go through the photos and figure out where I was. Of course, since Voiceover is no longer describing each photo, this is tricky.

2. I have tried to give the photos captions to make it easier to know which photo has focus after I have identified some of the photos with Be My Eyes. Unfortunately, these captions are not read by Voiceover as I flick through the list of photos. Is there any way to make the caption speak so that my labeling of the photos can have some meaning for me in identifying each photo easily without resorting to Be My Eyes?

3. After identifying a few photos, I hit the "Favorite" button for each photo. When looking through the photos app however, I don't see any way of finding what has been favorited? Is there an easier way of moving or copying a photo to a specific album?

This interface seems to be really clunky using Voiceover. If anyone has any suggestions for making this easier, I'm eager to hear them!

Thanks.

--Pete

By Holger Fiallo on Wednesday, July 17, 2024 - 13:21

I wander if iOS 18 will allow that.

By Winter Roses on Wednesday, July 17, 2024 - 13:21

When you add a caption to a picture, I have noticed that they are not being read aloud with voiceover, so, you're right about that. However, when you mark a photo as favorite, it should announce, favorite, beside of it, when you're scrolling through the album. You're not seeing that?
If you're on the photo that you want to be described in the camera roll, when you exit the Be My Eyes app by hitting the cancel button at the top of the screen, it should take you directly back to that picture. In your list of albums, there is an album for pictures that are your favorite pictures. Also, when you select pictures that you want to add to an album, let's say, vacation holiday, for example, go down to the share sheet, and there should be an option that says, add to album, then you choose the album that you want the pictures to be added to.

By Ollie on Wednesday, July 17, 2024 - 13:21

If you add the description in the mark up it is read out by voiceover. Don't have my phone to hand at the moment, but sadly the captions aren't voiced. It's a bit more involved, think you have to go to edit, add markup or something similar. Picibot can do this, though it is a copy of the file and leaves the original in your folder so it's quite easy to get multiples of the same photograph though with a variety of descriptions. I have asked the developer to create something that can batch describe images and put them in folders, but no luck so far.

The photos app is kind of a reck for voiceover. I can't even flick through photographs anymore, but thank you for the reminder as I'll add it to my beta feedback.

By Gary c on Tuesday, September 17, 2024 - 13:21

How are you doing your photo descriptions? For photos, I add a caption, select it, copy it, then turn off info, loThe cate the photo (where you get show details when you swipe down) and add the label with two finger, tap and hold. These labels speak in the library photos list. I don’t add the labels for videos, because on my phone at least, the label for the wrong video is often spoken. I add captions because I read somewhere that they’re supposed to be preserved with the photo when you export or email it. When I’ve emailed a photo to myself, and then saved it, I haven’t found this to be true. They were preserved, however, when I got a new iPhone. I started investigating what format the captions are stored in by analyzing pictures from iCloud with an app on the PC, But haven’t looked at that for a while. I think it stores the caption in at least a couple different standards.
From the library photos list, I can read the caption by rotating left once to more content, then swiping up. This is a pain, but it’s easier than opening the photo, selecting info, and reading the caption. I wish that captions were red automatically for photos that have no label because that rotor, up really slows things down.. The labels are not spoken in the Messages app in the message that you share the photo in, but I think the caption, and maybe the label, remain after sharing to another iPhone with iMessage after the photo is saved, or with AirDrop. While I’m writing about photos, I have tried to transfer photos to another cloud service to save space on my iCloud. I have found that if I transfer a photo to OneDrive, and then back again, the caption is preserved. I don’t remember about the label. Unfortunately, the caption is not readable on OneDrive. however, captions are not preserved if you back them up with Google Photos. Google Photos allows you to store a description, but it is stored using a different standard, so when you bring it back to the iPhone, the description is lost. I haven’t tried this with Google Drive.
I am using an iPhone SE third GEN on iOS 17.5.1.