Sometimes we're in a hurry, or we didn't think (or even know) about #AltText , for images and videos, to assist visually impaired and describing text for other languages.
PASS THIS AROUND #Boost
Guide on writing Alt Text: identifying who, the expression, the description, color, and interesting features.
Describe the most important thing first.ericwbailey.website
I'd like to boost this, but:
1. There's no alt text
2. There doesn't seem to be any link to the original source
In the interests of accessibility, avoiding disinformation and getting your post the most reach possible, would you consider fixing these two issues?
Thanks!
#alttext #ai #accessibility #websites #socialmedia https://youtu.be/CHCK43D0jJ0An Alt-Opinon On Alt-Text. In this conversation, Steven Scott and Shaun Preece...YouTube
Still looking for a reason to bother adding alt text to your images here? Here's one: out and about in low bandwidth land images may not ever load. The first image here is what it looks like. The second one shows what you get when the author included a description.
Folks who are blind don't need low bandwidth to experience the difference, in case you didn't know the most important reason.
Reminder: #AltText is not a place for copyright information, or additional details about the image.
Put that into a separate post, for the love of god.
It's as if you were blocking a bike path with a street sign.
The purpose of alt text is increased accessibility, so when in doubt, ask yourself if the text you're adding helps blind or visually impaired folks better understand what's in the actual image.
"How can you use AI, it steals things people share online, it burns down the planet!"
"Alright, do you mind telling me what's in this picture you posted online?"
"Ah. Carry on."
Hey, if you don't like the fact that many #blind people have to rely on AI to describe images for them, you can help by, you know, describing images for them.
mastodon.social/@botwiki/11147…
Do you typically use AI to describe images you post/see on social media? #AltText #ImageDescription #accessibility #a11y #blind #ai #poll [ ] Yes, and I'm blind/visually impaired [ ] No, and I'm blind/visually impaired [ ] Yes, and I'm not blind/vi…Mastodon
The contorted excuses people concoct to excuse not adding #altText boggle my mind.
Case in point: even if alt text is "now primarily used to train AI" [citation desperately needed], as I've just seen claimed, there are still real-world humans who benefit from it, just as there have been since the web emerged.
If AI tech is now being trained on alt text, it's also now being trained on all the rest of your whatever.
By only concerning yourself with the alt text, you're routing all the AI-related harm to screen reader users, actual humans who already experience massive social & technical marginalization.
Solve the image issues for humans.
Then, in parallel, solve your more widespread AI problem (like adding rules to your robots.txt darkvisitors.com/docs/robots-t… ).
It's much simpler to just start adding "cute cat" to your cute cat photos than it is to invent new excuses for behaviors that ultimately just harm screen reader users.
Here's a great alt text guide! axesslab.com/alt-texts/
This post contains everything you need to know about alt-texts! When to use them and how to perfectly craft them. By me, Daniel, a web developer with vision impairment who use a screen reader in my day-to-day life.Daniel Göransson (Axess Lab)
A few extra seconds of your time it takes to add a good image description can really improve someone's day.
"To a totally blind person like me it means a lot to have a picture in my mind of your images, especially the animal pics."
"I don't know what it is, but as a blind user it's making me emotional to be able to actually interact with content."
#accessibility #a11y #AltText #ImageDescriptions
What is alt text? Alternative text (or alt text, in short) is the text you can use to describe an image when you publish it on your website or social media.Alt Text Hall of Fame
#SocialCoop has been discussing whether to disable images on May 16 and October 10 for #WorldSightDay, as suggested here stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/1….
One concern raised about this proposal is that it is symbolic and might not do anything to improve the lives of people with visual impairments.
I would like to hear perspectives from people with visual impairments on whether this kind of action is helpful.
(boosts welcome; please only reply if you rely on alt text)
Attached: 1 image In solidarity with the blind and vision-impaired community, I propose that twice a year, on the World Sight Day and the Global Accessibility Awareness Day, fediverse admins disable images on their servers to highlight the importanc…Stefan's Personal Mastodon Server
If you're #blind, #VisuallyImpaired, or otherwise rely on #AssistiveTecnhologies and #AltText, your thoughts on this proposal to temporarily disable images across the fediverse to highlight the importance of well-written image descriptions would be very much appreciated.
social.coop/@dynamic/112349215…
Please boost the original post for reach!
#SocialCoop has been discussing whether to disable images on May 16 and October 10 for #WorldSightDay, as suggested here https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/112275637561897034.social.coop
One thing I learned when making an 88x31 badges page: it is actually a really good example of one of the few times you should keep #AltText generally short.
When you have dozens of tiny badges on a page, it should be easy to skim them the same way it is for a sighted user. It shouldn’t take an hour to finish reading the page.
a porcentaxe de imaxes publicadas no mastodon.gal que teñen un texto que as describe é mínima. Non todas as persoas actúan do mesmo xeito, pero tendo habilidade e tempo para escribir media dúcia de cancelos que acompañan á publicación, tampouco é un traballo enorme engadir unha breve descrición á imaxe e axudar así a persoas con dificultades visuais, a aportar contexto ao que se ve, a que os lectores de pantalla poidan facer a súa labor e a ter empatía con quen nos le.
Incluso hai servizos (iniciativas) como #AltText4Me para intentar axudar a quen o precise.
Todos os clientes coñecidos teñen no seu editor un apartado para engadir esta descrición.
A veces vexo un certo patrón, como se fose cool ou algo así tirar aí unha imaxe e que se apañen, unha artistada snob.
Xa pode ser ben fermosa que non lle poño nin estreliña ⭐
De etiquetar as nosas publicacións idioma #galego xa falamos outro día.
mastodon.gal é unha instancia en galego de Mastodon para a comunidade galega.Mastodon aloxado en mastodon.gal
I have one image, and two very differing descriptions of said image. The first is from #Llava13B, a local model installed on my #Mac, and the second is from #GPT. The GPT response is so huge that I'm going to have to post it as threaded replies, but it shows the vast difference between models. For this first post, the Llava13B response has been included as #AltText.
1/
I’m sorry but the interface for adding alt text (image descriptions, which all images should have) on mobile is terrible in most apps. Here is tumblr and the Mastodon app. 👎 #mastodonsupport #mastodonapp #alttext
(please do not reply telling me to use desktop, I do, it’s great, or with other work-around suggestions. I just posted the names of 30 insects using OCR and a host of other tools— I’m the queen of work-arounds! the point here is that “accessibility” shouldn’t be an afterthought!)
It's a #Cat yall! Meet Friday. He loves soft blankets, he adores any soft things really. This is him in his happiest of happy places.
#Cats #CatsOfMastodon #MastoCats
My alt text only exists until someone can do it justice, when I will then edit this to make it better.
#AltText #AltTextForMe
A timely and rather shocking meme, to which I have added #AltText...
#Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency
A great article on how to add ALT text to your images
pathofex.com/how-to-add-alt-te…
#Alttext #twittermigration #newtomastodon
Add alt text to images on Mastodon if you want to add more visibility to your images. It gives your readers a hint about the image you have added in case their internet speed is low or they have an issue with loading images.Shivangi Gupta
Seeing AI: Making the visual world more accessible
youtube.com/watch?v=DybczED-GK… 3.5 Min #YouTube
Remember your #AltText, eh!
Featuring Andre Louis, talented Musician, Composer, Keyboard Player, YouTuber, Teacher (and all around nice guy)
Not sure about how to be more inclusive? #Follow @FreakyFwoof
#SeeingAI #VisualImpairment #Tools #Readers
In honor of UN International Day of Persons with Disabilities, Seeing AI is rolling out new language support to make the app even more accessible to the mill...YouTube
*borrowed from someone who borrowed and just pasted, without comment, explanation, credit or inclusion.
IF YOU DON'T USE #AltText and describe your images, I won't boost them. If you stole them anyway, and are just sharing Goggle *finds* and random pictures that strike your fancy, I'll do the work for you, and include those with Visual Impairment or other languages to know what this is about.
#ClimateChange #Response #Cartoon #Alt4You
TELL EVERYONE ABOUT THIS.
AND the inclusion thing too?
The prime minister is criticised for excluding blind users by not fully describing images in a tweet.By Jordan Kenny (BBC News)
Oh, #screenreaders cutting off long #alttext is a myth? yatil.net/blog/there-is-no-cha…
That is fantastic news, I was really worried we'd have to do ridiculous things with longdesc (deprecated) or visible alt text.
Ahh! Finally.
Some people might say that alternative text for images has a 125 character limit. That’s not correct.Eric Eggert
Since this post is getting some attention, I've also been using this one a lot recently
In 1993 alt text was added to the HTML specification. Someone then posted an idea: A library where people could store and look up alt text for frequently used images. I've lost the post, and no one else that I can find has talked about it since.
I believe that the time is now, but I can no longer be who. As I announced yesterday, I am closing down the alt-text.org project, but others have expressed interest in carrying the project forward.
(cont)
One of the great things about coming over to Mastodon has been raising my awareness of alt text for images.
Including this by default when uploading files is a great move. Not only is it better for accessibility on this platform, but it upskills people on how to do this creating content elsewhere online.
One of the best resources I have found and can highly recommend is this webpage from Harvard: accessibility.huit.harvard.edu…
#mastodon #accessibility #website #AltText
Alternative (Alt) Text is meant to convey the “why” of the image as it relates to the content of a document or webpage. It is read aloud to users by screen reader software, and it is indexed by search engines.accessibility.huit.harvard.edu
Folks, I want to boost your lovely posts, I really do but I won’t if you don’t write image descriptions (alt text) so people who use screen readers can also experience them.
It doesn’t take long to write one.
And if you’re posting an image of text and you have an iPhone, you can select the text from the image with a long press and copy/paste it.
Even Linux has apps that do this (like Frog: tenderowl.com/work/frog/)
#accessibility #a11y #fediverse #altText #images #screenReader #mastodon
![Illustration titled "The four ages of white innocence:
[A white child]: too young to understand
[A white teenager]: made a youthful mistake
[A white adult]: listening and learning
[A white elder]: from a different time](https://fedi.ml/photo/preview/640/386458 "Illustration titled \"The four ages of white innocence:
[A white child]: too young to understand
[A white teenager]: made a youthful mistake
[A white adult]: listening and learning
[A white elder]: from a different time")
