Revisiting MLB Opening Day Pennant races are heating up for MLB but I want to step back to opening day for the 2026 season for a minute. For the last several years I’ve made last-minute purchases for tickets to the opening day game for the Brewers. Not so this year. When I went to search for tickets, I discovered that the Brewers, like a lot of MLB teams as far as I can tell, made…
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I’ve been sitting on this project for a couple weeks, and it’s time to write about it. Windows has had a Live Captions feature for a couple of years now. Turn it on and a small bar appears at the bottom of the screen, showing whatever it’s currently hearing — your microphone, a meeting, a video, anything the system is playing. For a sighted person who just wants a quick visual backup while they half-listen…
One CommentSince writing about The Image Description Toolkit (IDT) 4.0 Beta 1 in February, a lot of work on the toolkit has been happening. A new beta is out, new models have been added, the prompt library has grown, and I found a perfect real-world dataset to put the whole system through its paces: NASA’s Image of the Day collection. This post is about what I learned, what the data showed, and why the right prompt…
2 CommentsA 4.0Beta1 release of my Image Description Toolkit is now available. If you are unfamiliar with this project, it provides apps to handle image description using Ollama AI models that can run locally. The toolkit is specifically aimed at handling large numbers of images and videos. The toolkit offers both a command line (IDT) version and a graphical version (ImageDescriber) and allows you to generate descriptions based on a series of predefined prompts or add…
One CommentWith the end of the year approaching, I was doing some tax prep. I asked the Windows version of Copilot to convert a final pay summary from my last employer into something that was more readable. To Copilot’s credit, it converted the PDF into a highly accessible Excel spreadsheet. That’s the positive. It is really handy. Unfortunately, that’s not the full story. In reviewing the conversation, here is how the entry providing my answer reads…
Leave a CommentA 3.6.0 release for my Image Description Toolkit is now available. The release features a new –redescribe option as well as support for two Microsoft Florence-2 models via Hugging Face. Redescribe The redescribe option can be used with the command line version of the toolkit to redescribe the same set of images without the need to extract video frames or convert image files to JPG from HEIC. This can save time and allow you to…
2 CommentsIf you follow me on social media, one of the themes you’ll find I talk about fairly often related to accessibility is how text that isn’t shown visually needs to have better verification. This can be anything from alt text on web pages, to the accessible names used in different applications for controls such as menus and more. For several months now, the Windows Copilot app has had a serious problem that fits in this…
2 CommentsWith more AI-driven development I have another sizable update for my Image Description Toolkit or IDT. There is a full What’s New document available. Highlights for this beta release include use of geolocation data when present in images, the ability to download images from a specified web address and have them run through the image description system and numerous other enhancements. You can also keep current with all my projects from my Projects page.
One CommentI’m looking to crowd source some feedback. I’ve mentioned here a few times a collection of tools I’ve created called the Image Description Toolkit. The short version of this is that it is a way to get image descriptions that you can save and customize the level of detail you get. This can be a bit of an abstract concept in a world where many still do not understand alt text. So, I’ve put together…
Leave a CommentI have a vastly updated version of my Image Description Toolkit (IDT) available. The 3.0 release builds on the command line workflow tools I released earlier with a guided workflow creation system, analysis tools for combining descriptions, a range of performance statistics on your descriptions and tools to review content from various AI models and prompts. The IDT also includes several other tools for working with image descriptions. A results viewer allows you to browse…
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