When you click on one of the images, the extension queries the Computer Vision API to get some descriptive text for the image and then uses either the Web Speech API or Bing Speech API to share it with the visitor. My little proof of concept simply extracts images from a web page (the one in the active tab) and displays the thumbnails in a list. Indeed, using today’s AI algorithms in the cloud, as well as text-to-speech technologies, exposed in the browser with the Web Speech API or using a remote cloud service, we can very easily build an extension that analyzes web page images with missing or improperly filled alt text properties. I was recently inspired while listening to a great talk by Chris Heilmann in Lisbon: “ Pixels and Hidden Meaning in Pixels.” Still, I’ve been looking for something that would help blind people in a more general way. In my case, I’m concerned with accessibility on the web and I’ve already spent some time thinking about how to make a breakout game accessible using web audio and SVG, for instance.

We’ll see that, with a few lines of code, we can create some powerful features in the browser. Let’s build a proof of concept - an extension that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and computer vision to help the blind analyze images on a web page. Don’t worry: Building one is simple and straightforward.

So, if you’ve never built an extension before or don’t know how it works, have a quick look at those resources. Microsoft (also, see the great overview video “ Building Extensions for Microsoft Edge”).

I won’t cover the basics of extension development because plenty of good resources are already available from each vendor: Note: We won’t cover Safari in this article because it doesn’t support the same extension model as others. Edge, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Brave and Vivaldi), and provide some simple tips on how to get a unique code base for all of them, but also how to debug in each browser. I’ll explain how you can install this extension that supports the web extension model (i.e. Indeed, the Chrome extension model based on HTML, CSS and JavaScript is now available almost everywhere, and there is even a Browser Extension Community Group working on a standard. In today’s article, we’ll create a JavaScript extension that works in all major modern browsers, using the very same code base.

Opera extensions in vivaldi