Facebook will use artificial intelligence to detect what is in photographs on the social network and read out the descriptions to blind people.
The company says more than two billion photos are shared everyday across Facebook's apps, and are therefore an integral part of the experience.
The new feature, automatic alternative text (alt text), generates a description of a photo using advancements in object recognition technology.
"People using screen readers on iOS devices will hear a list of items a photo may contain as they swipe past photos on Facebook," the company said in a blog post. "Before today, people using screen readers would only hear the name of the person who shared the photo, followed by the term 'photo' when they came upon an image in News Feed."
Facebook is the second social network to introduce alt text to photographs.
Last week, rival Twitter added a similar feature to its Android and iOS app. However, Twitter users are prompted to add descriptions manually to their photographs to aid assistive technology like screen readers and braille displays.
Facebook's feature is only available in English for iOS users at the moment. The company plans to expand the feature to other languages and operating systems within the coming months.
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