Hi everyone on this beautiful Monday evening. I was feeling a bit down in the dumps earlier today. The reason is the fact that I had a vision screening by the blindness agency this morning. The result was more or less as I expected: I only have a tiny bit of light perception in the central visual field of my left eye. It however was a bit of a bummer too, in that I’d hoped to perform slightly better.
To cheer myself up, I thought I’d join The Weekly Smile and share how amazingly far assistive technology has come. It may not replace actual vision, but, combined with my imagination, it can go a long way.
What I mean by assistive tech specifically is VoiceOver Recognition, the iPhone’s built-in image description functionality that was released first in iOS 14 not even a year ago. Last month, I already mentioned that it can recognize some basic shapes and colors (such as my pink, heart-shaped polymer clay ornament.
on Wednesday though, my father-in-law posted a picture of a statue to the family’s WhatsApp group and asked us to guess who it was. Without VoiceOver Recognition or similar third-party apps, I would have lost out on the fun. VoiceOver Recognition though immediately described the image as a statue of a bear on a water fountain. I replied with this answer in the group and was asked to name the bear. A little Googling revealed that it was “Berend Botje” from the nursery rhyme by that name.
My husband told me that, from the picture, he hadn’t made out that the statue was of a bear. I ran the image through VoiceOver Recognition and Seeing AI, one of the more commonly-used third-party apps for image description, just now and neither recognized it as a bear specifically this time. However, the fact that I “won” my family’s very visual riddle despite being totally blind, definitely makes me smile.
I’m also joining in with #LifeThisWeek and #SeniSal.
A Multitude of Musings 
That’s fantastic that you can get such good descriptions. Looking at the image you’ve shared though, to me it looks more like a leprechaun – a little man in a top hat smoking a pipe!
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Oh, it might be a leprechaun indeed, I’m not too sure. Seeing AI said it was a statue of a person. According to Wikipedia, it was intended as kind of a bear if I remember correctly. In any case, I’m delighted I won the riddle.
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Yay that’s really cool!
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Yes, it is. 🙂
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That was a very cool win, technology can be very helpful and is amazing!
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Thank you, I agree. 🙂
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That’s cool.
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Yes, it is. 🙂
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❤️
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Thanks but just wondering, why do you post these emojis as replies rather than just hit the like button on my comments (which you also do if I’m correct)? I’m not offended, just confused as to what purpose these serve.
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I think it’s become a habit. If I’m in a hurry, I’d reply with an emoji.
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Oh okay, that makes sense! However, there’s absolutely no obligation to reply to every reply I write to you. Just clicking the like button will notify me too. And of course there’s no need to be in a hurry with me at all. 🙂
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Thanks!
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I agree with Juliette, the statue looks like a leprechaun to me, too. Great job winning the guess about the statue. Technology can be life-changing. So glad you have this help.
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Thank you. I definitely love my technology indeed.
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That’s so cool! Thank you for sharing this. Made me smile too 🙂
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I’m so glad it made you smile. Thanks for commenting.
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Very cool about the technology. It is amazing what can be done,and I am sure it will get even better as time goes on. I usually try to put descriptions in my images, but I know I missed this week since I was in a hurry. Besides the good use of technology (I agree with the others that it looks like a leprechaun), this post reminded me that I need to do better with those descriptions.
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Thank you for stopping by and for trying to include image descriptions on your own blog as much as possible. Even I forget sometimes, so it’s totally understandable that you will not always do it. In fact, I didn’t include an alt text with this post’s image.
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How wonderful for you. Technology for the win! Thanks for sharing the post for Life This Week. Loved reading yours. Next week’s optional prompt is Self Care Stories. Hope to see you there too. Denyse
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Thank you so much for commenting. Yes, technology helps me so much! I’ll definitely try to join in with #LifeThisWeek next week again.
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Thank you very much for participating and sharing your posts at SeniorSalon
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