The amount of hate I've seen directed at alt-text and at people who ask for, and provide, alt-text recently is disgusting. It's absurd levels of ableism (ableism is prejudice and discrimination against someone with a disability).
Alt-text is a disability aid that helps blind and partially sighted people understand the contents of an image when they're browsing fedi using a screenreader. The screenreader reads the contents of a post, and when it comes to an image, it reads the contents -
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Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •- of the alt-text field. If there is nothing there, the screenreader will say something like 'image'. It provides no context for the content of the image, but it does at least let the person know that there is an image there.
But some of you ableist smart-arses have been putting things like 'deliberately left blank' in your alt-text fields. Can you imagine being blind, scrolling through your social media feed, your screenreader reads out a post then says to you,
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Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •'deliberately left blank'? Not just 'image' - no, not someone who just didn't have the spoons or the time or the inclination to write alt text - they went out of their way to make sure you know that *you aren't welcome*. 'You're blind? Sucks to be you, get off my feed.'
Meanwhile, others have prepared images - screencaps of text - that they're using to reply to folk who helpfully provide alt-text when it's missing.
Imagine having an image prepared that you paste into every reply -
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The Drop Bear 2.0
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •- of someone asking for or writing your alt-text, that attacks you for providing a disability service!
The image compares adding alt-text to 'putting ramps in my house in case I get a wheelchair visitor, or providing sign language for videos I make'.
Nope! Wildly incorrect analogy. Try, you're in a public location enjoying the ambiance and a wheelchair user wants to use the same space, but there's a step in the way and they can't get there.
Someone else comes along who has a portable -
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Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •- wheelchair ramp and places it against the step, but you kick it away. Another person gives you a button you can press that will automatically place a ramp there without you needing to do anything more strenuous than press a button, but you refuse.
You are *actively* - not passively, *actively*, choosing to ignore the needs of a disabled person even when you don't actually have to do anything - when someone else is doing all the work (providing the alt-text) for you. You are actively -
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Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •- discriminating against people with disabilities.
I've seen people who provide alt-text under un-captioned images called nazis, fascist, 'alt text virtue signalling keyboard warriors' - a person who was kind enough to write up alt-text to make sure a post is accessible to blind folk, without asking for *anything* in return from the poster, without asking the poster to do *any* work themselves is being *fascist*? Do you HEAR yourselves?
Alt-text is a disability aid. There are MANY options -
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Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •- available to you if you don't have the time, energy, or general inclination to write alt-text on all of your images;
1) Do nothing. Someone might write up alt-text in a reply to your image. This is not a call-out, it's not shaming you, it's not being done to make you feel bad, you are not being bullied. Get over yourself. It's NOT ABOUT YOU. It's about the blind person who might find your post and wonder what the image is about, and someone who DID have the time/energy/inclination to -
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Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •- write alt-text did that blind person a kindness. That's all. You don't have to interact with it, you don't have to thank them, you don't even have to edit your post to paste in the alt-text they wrote for you (but you can, if you want). You can just literally do nothing and leave the alt-text field empty. I hope you don't, and choose one of the below options instead, but the option of *doing nothing* instead of actively choosing to be an arsehole is always available to you.
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Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •2) Tag your post with #Alt4Me and someone will provide alt-text in a reply to your post. You don't have to do anything with it; if a blind person reads that hashtag in your post, they'll know to read the replies to find the alt-text.
3) If your image has text in it, use the OCR function conveniently built in to mastodon, from the image edit window, to detect the text and automatically output into the alt-text field.
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Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •4) There are loads of tools online that will generate alt-text for your image; search 'auto-describe image for alt text' in your search engine of choice. These are AI-based, so it depends on your comfort with using such tools (and remember that fedi is full of people who will gladly write your alt-text for you, if you aren't comfortable using an AI tool).
Lastly, if you're feeling attacked, and bullied, when someone else provides alt text for your image, try some introspection.
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Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •Ask yourself WHY you're feeling so 'shamed' when someone else writes up alt-text on your post without you even having to do anything. Is this shame YOUR gut-reaction that's actually directed inwards? It's not someone else shaming you, it's YOU feeling ashamed of YOURSELF for realising you're ableist?
When you get angry at other people for asking for or providing alt-text, are you angry because they're highlighting your prejudice?
Remember: alt-text is a disability aid. When the option of -
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Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •- 'doing nothing' is available to you, and you instead choose to attack people who provide this disability aid, or to go out of your way to point out to people that you actively refuse to use this disability aid, you aren't passively opting out of using this disability aid; you are making a deliberate, conscious choice to be an ableist arsehole.
[end of thread]
Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •Ben Royce 🇺🇦 🇸🇩
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •alt text should just be mandatory
sure some will write "jyiifnsbeudg"
but it takes 3 seconds to write "dog eating a carrot"
LJ
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •I love the concept of universal access. Like when curb cuts became a thing - wonder of wonders, it also helped folks with baby strollers & shopping carts.
Another advantage of alt text? It gives you more characters to expand context of your post! When I first came to fedi, I used one of the bots that remind you of you post w/o alt text & it helped me develop the habit.
Janeishly
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •Smbsy
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •"Deliberately left blank"!
These are the same geniuses who bag up dog crap and leave it hanging in a tree, aren't they?
Yeesh.
SnowshadowII :maple:
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •Lux :flag_genderfluid:
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
in reply to Lux :flag_genderfluid: • • •Kay Ohtie
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •Mohab
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •Kay Ohtie
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •it's always shocking to see stuff like this. I remember seeing a post from a visually disabled person thanking photographers directly for putting alt text because especially for those who lost their sight it allowed them to re-live those visuals in their mind's eye. I never thought I'd see the same, but now I've multiple folks following me who thanked me for such on artwork I've uploaded because it allows them to visualize it.
I can't imagine not doing it anymore.
Théotime
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
in reply to Théotime • • •@Theotime812 Yep! And people here are generally very understanding that writing good alt-text is difficult, and it's a skill you need to practice and learn as much as anything, and doing that takes time, that you might not be great when you start, but even a tiny effort is very much appreciated.
But no, gotta be a dick about it instead. :/
T🎃N
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •Assholes gonna asshole but that is sad.
Chris Wood
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •Andy Fletcher
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •Sigh, some people are just arseholes, plain and simple.
I'd just block and mute anyone who I encountered putting "deliberately left blank" in the ALT text unless there was a very good reason for them doing so and I can't think of a suitable reason at the moment!
Cats Who Draw :autism:
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •LionelB
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •sunflowerinrain
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •Fear? "One day I'll lose my sight, like grandad, and that terrifies me so..."
I started to think of other reasons for such actions (none of which are useful or valid), but gave up because I can't think of obvious cures.
Tim Smalley
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •John Mierau
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •Ovro
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •Trammell Hudson
in reply to Ovro • • •They See Your Photos
They See Your PhotosSini Tuulia
Unknown parent • • •@clare_hooley @bodhipaksa The solution to this is very easy. Just type something like this to the text field: "Decorative aesthetic image without specific meaning." There, you've described it (in a minimum viable way) and haven't cluttered anyone's perceptions.
Just a little bit more would be better, though. "Aesthetic image of violet tulips just for decoration." If your image doesn't mean much, you can state your intent of putting it there, you meant something when you did!
Clare Hooley
Unknown parent • • •Bodhipaksa
Unknown parent • • •@clare_hooley In a web page images are often purely illustrative. You write a blog post and you decorate it with —at best — some nice eye-candy. There’s no point in describing that.
In social media it’s incredibly rare for someone to do that. If you share an image, the image has a point. There are very few times on Mastodon where alt text should be blank.
KSP Atlas
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
in reply to KSP Atlas • • •Sean
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •I had no idea alt4me was a thing though, I’m dysgraphic as hell so describing things doesn’t always come easy, it’s very cool that exists.
Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
in reply to Sean • • •Sini Tuulia
Unknown parent • • •Weil Averdui
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •Elena ``of Valhalla''
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • •@Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator I've met people who have stopped adding alt-text to their posts because they have become convinced that the only/main use of alt-text is by AI-scrapers.
I believe that they are mistaken, and that avoiding alt-text is going to hurt people more than it's going to hinder AIs, but I can see how their choice comes from a somewhat reasonable source
Sadly, I can also see how that may lead to aggressiveness when being asked for alt-text, but I have no idea how to deal with it in a productive way (i.e. one that leads them to change their ideas rather than becoming more entrenched into them)
Also, why do we have to live on an internet where we can't have nice things anymore?
like this
FiXato, VK Nask e Festive Firehorseart like this.
Isu 🐲
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •Karen Mardahl
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •Krautnapped™
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator • • •As someone who designs things for the web daily, not adding alt text is like cutting off your nose to spite your face.
At its most basic, it aids people who need it. 👍 But, at its best, it helps ANYONE who may need it! 🙌
I can't even recall the number of times that alt text has allowed me an extra level of context I might have missed! And I have no impairments to images. It's like including lyrics and notes to your album.
It makes all your content more appealing to *EVERYONE*
Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
Unknown parent • • •