BildzuText

BildzuText is a software framework that converts visual content into textual representations for accessibility, search, and archival workflows. The system combines optical character recognition (OCR), image understanding, and natural language generation to produce alt text, captions, and metadata from images and graphics.

Architecture and modules include image ingestion, OCR and layout analysis, scene description and captioning, multilingual support, and export options such as plain text, JSON, and metadata records. It can operate in local mode for privacy or in cloud mode for scale, and supports integration with content management systems and digital archives.

Technology and standards used by BildzuText include OCR engines, which may be open-source or proprietary, and image-to-text captioning models for describing scenes. Tagging relies on image recognition to assign keywords. Outputs are designed to align with accessibility standards such as WCAG and to support search indexing and cataloging. The project emphasizes privacy-preserving processing and auditable outputs.

Applications and reception encompass web accessibility, digital libraries, e-commerce image management, and media archives. Limitations include OCR accuracy for low-quality or complex images, potential biases in automatic captions, and dependence on training data quality. The project encourages community contributions and provides a reference implementation and documentation.

See also: Optical character recognition, Image captioning, Alt text, WCAG, Metadata.