Christine Malec (@ChristineMalec@mstdn.ca)
mstdn.ca
Fuck I love Mastodon! No other platform has ever given me as a Blind person such access to the public sphere as I've gotten today from alt text of protests in the United States. Thanks to all you gorgeous folk for demonstrating that inclusion matters, cause it sure does to me!

Link to the post: https://mstdn.ca/@ChristineMalec/114287613261480676

Some Details about media descriptions (Also commonly called “ALT Text”, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt_attribute )

Lemmy also has ALT texts when you upload an image.

Other reasons why ALT texts are awesome:

  • people with smartphones sometimes configure their clients to NOT download pictures/videos to save data. Picture Descriptions enable them to a) interact with these posts properly without the risk of not understanding a big part of the post. b) enables the conscious decision if they want to see this media.
  • search engines can index this post better, so your post will have more reach when you duckduckgo for it.
  • fediverse people searching for things can find your post
  • people who are confused what the image on the post means can read the picture description to understand nuances they missed. And there are many reasons why that might be the case
    • people not knowing people/scenes referenced in the image
    • different sense of humor, so they don’t get the joke, but might want to understand the joke
    • different life experience - the viewer might be a 14 year old child - so they don’t get the joke, but might want to understand the joke
    • people having difficulties reading emotions depicted in the facial expressions in the picture
    • people having not slept enough or are otherwise exhausted

however, it should also not matter why people might not understand the picture, because there are probably plenty of other reasons i don’t know why it is perfectly normal to not understand a picture.

and even when you think that you only have 12 followers - none of which you think need a picture description - your post might get boosted; it might get viral accidentally because it hits a nerve.

However, of course there are times when you don’t have the energy to describe the media properly. This is fine! We all know situations like this.

  • For mastodon, there exists a bot which can generate a picture description using a local artificial intelligence hosted on their server: https://fuzzies.wtf/@altbot (see the profile description on how to use that)
  • It is even possible to mention them in lemmy: @altbot@fuzzies.wtf (it might be the case that your instance doesn’t know about this account yet, but then you can search for “@altbot@fuzzies.wtf” which will force your instance to index this account.
  • You can request help with alt texts by including hashtags like #ALT4me
  • when you receive a picture description, either from the bot or from other people, you can edit your post and insert the picture description afterwards.

Thanks if you participate in making the fediverse an awesome place for people with reduced sight! 💜

  • Fedditor385@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    23 hours ago

    There is also a seemingly toxic side to this, as people call out the ones who do not add alt text to their pictures. While it is helpful and inclusive, it is not a requirement and people who don’t do it (be it unknowingly or otherwise) should not be treated badly or called out for it.

    • who@feddit.orgEnglish
      0·
      14 hours ago

      People should not be treated badly in general, but not “called out”?

      I run into video-link-only posts in text forums on Lemmy every so often, and IMHO, they contribute little more than noise. There’s nothing wrong with encouraging their authors to add at least a summary or start a conversation about the subject matter. Without that, video links that aren’t of obvious widespread interest usually feel like they’re treating the rest of us as a click farm, whether we’re vision-impaired or not.