Automatic Alternative Text Plugin

Automatic Alternative Text makes accessible images easy and fast by automatically generating alt text for images with Microsoft’s Cognitive Services Computer Vision API.

The Computer Vision API’s algorithms analyze the content found in an image and generates complete sentences of human readable language describing what is found in the image. The Automatic Alternative Text plugin gets this description and adds it as the alt text for each image uploaded while the plugin is active.

Privacy

The image, voice, video or text understanding capabilities of Automatic Alternative Text uses Microsoft Cognitive Services. Microsoft will receive the images, audio, video, and other data that you upload (via this app) for service improvement purposes. To report abuse of the Microsoft Cognitive Services to Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft Cognitive Services website at https://www.microsoft.com/cognitive-services, and use the “Report Abuse” link at the bottom of the page to contact Microsoft. For more information about Microsoft privacy policies please see their privacy statement here: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=521839.

The two methods of installing the plugin are:

1. Search for “Automatic Alternative Text” in Plugins > Add New and click the Install button.
2. Unzip the archive and put the automatic-alt-text folder into your site’s /wp-content/plugins/ folder.

Then activate Automatic Alt Text from the Plugins menu.

Usage

Before the plugin will work you need to supply an API key and endpoint for Microsoft’s Cognitive Services Computer Vision API. You can learn how to sign up for a free key here. Go to the Settings > Media page to enter the key and endpoint from Microsoft.

Once your key and endpoint are entered any image you upload from that point forward will automatically have its alt text set to a caption supplied by Microsoft’s Cognitive Services where possible.

1. 

   Dismissable admin notice on installation.

2. 

   Plugin settings.

3. 

   An uploaded image with automatic alt text added.

Why aren’t my images receiving alt text?

There’s several reasons an image might not get alt text:
1. Your API key is missing or incorrect. Make sure that your key is saved and accurate in Settings > Media. Also make sure that the key is for the Computer Vision API.
2. The service is not confident enough in the caption. By default the plugin will only use the received caption as alt text if the service is at least 15% confident in the result. You can adjust this confidence threshold in Settings > Media.
3. The service cannot connect to your server or is prevented from accessing the image for any reason. Try entering your image URL on this page to see if the service can connect outside the context of this plugin.
4. You’ve exceeded your key’s request quota. You can view your usage and upgrade your quota here.

Can I automatically add alt text to images I’ve already uploaded?

Not yet. I might add this functionality in a future version.

1.1.4

• Fix an error that would occur if the API returned a 200 response but no captions.

1.1.3

• Support newer endpoint URLs that are missing the API endpoint, since Azure does not include this in the resource overview anymore.

1.1.2

• Fix admin notice appearing even when dismissed.

1.1.1

• Fix broken link in admin notice.

1.1

• Added setting for Endpoint URL, to support API changes.
• Changed help links to up-to-date URLs.

1.0.1

• Fixed typo in settings.

1.0

• First release.