I've seen people saying they don't include alt-text with their art/photos because they don't want to 'explain the meaning' of their work.

Alt text isn't for people who can see your images perfectly. It's for those who can't. Your desire to 'let the viewer decide the meaning' isn't more important than people's disability needs, and the alt text and meaning of the art are mutually exclusive. Get over yourself. If you have the spoons, add alt text. If you don't, use # Alt4Me or :helpdescribe: .

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in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

Expanding on 'the alt text and the meaning are mutually exclusive' - alt text isn't to say arty bollocks like 'this piece explores the relationship between emerging sexualities and romance tourism'. It's to literally describe the image. "An abstract piece using black and red lines of varying thickness that create a tangle of chaos increasing in density towards the center", for example, or "A soft hazy sunset over an empty beach at low tide under a pastel blue-orange sky".
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

I genuinely love the perspective of beginning with the overview description and working inward toward detail: format, media, genre, color, composition, subject, style, technique.

That way the user can determine at what level of detail they want to halt the readout while retaining a high-level understanding of the image.

in reply to Jason Galla

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@gallaimage If you want specific examples of well written alt-text, I'm often thanked for mine when I post my stuff from WelshPixie. See wandering.shop/@mrszee/1099259… from today, and mastodon.art/@welshpixie/10937… - I can't see the comment on it now but a blind person said the alt text was great and he could 'see' the image in his mind's eye (I think the image is also too old to load so I've attached it here with the same alt-text)


your alt text raises the bar

in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

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"the alt text and meaning of the art are mutually exclusive." You have the attention of my heart. So, what is a useful description that does not anchor the work in place, time, etc.? Do I need to work on prose and poetry to accompany the work?

One of my favorites is Hiroshi Sugimoto
sugimotohiroshi.com/photogenic…
An example is "Ligurian Sea, Saviore, 1993". How does one make effable something so ineffable? If there is useful alt text that doesn't undermine the work, you have me convinced.

in reply to Jason Galla

@gallaimage You can't undermine the work for someone who can't see the work at all in the first place, and it's entirely okay to also add personal meaning to the piece if you *want* to, I'm just saying that it's not okay to use that as an excuse *not* to add alt text.

Personally I'd alt-text this as "A monotone image where a flat, dark body of water textured only by a slight ripple of waves is barely visible beneath a bank of heavy grey fog that dominates the scene." (cont)

in reply to Jason Galla

@gallaimage Yup, all the advice I give on how to write alt-text (mastodon.art/@Curator/10927903…) is based on feedback I've had from many blind and partially sighted friends and fedi users, and there are copious articles like theverge.com/2021/7/30/2258754… out there that cover the topic :)
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

If you want everyone to see your work you add alt text so that everyone can truly see your work. Not everyone sees in the same way. Some use screen readers because they can't view the screen with their eyes. By not including alt text, you lose a large part of your audience and there is maybe lost income too from potential buyers. Sorry, my day job is in Accessibility so I understand why we need alt text.
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in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

I feel like some of these folks never did any of the formal art class describe essay studies. While I only ever did an intro art class, one part was to describe a piece but in an objective manner. By how the teacher explain, it helps to mentally view the art in that way to break down pieces and see what underlying structures make up the piece.

Of course, I am slight bad on forgetting the alt text, but slowly going back to working on adding that.

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mastodon - Collegamento all'originale

Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

@jonahstein @jerry @paulligas If you're using the web browser / web app, the image will have a '!No description added' warning across it. Other clients have similar things. You can also follow @PleaseCaption who will yell at you every time you post an image without alt-text, so you can go back and edit it. On .art we also have CSS that puts a dashed blue border around images without alt-text so they're easy to spot. If you don't want a border around your work, add alt text.
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mastodon - Collegamento all'originale

berkes 🐝 🚐 🏄 🌱

@slevelt do you think an artist who makes art only partly accessible is an asshole?

What about an artist that puts her paintings up in, say, a gallery in Strasbourg. Making it inaccessible to 99% of the world, is she an asshole? Is an artist who places a statue in a private home an asshole? Is a singer who refuses to write down their music an asshole?

in reply to P Stewart

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@pstewart @paulligas @jerry The crawler that SD uses respects it, yes (it's a generic crawler that's not specific to SD, it's just the one SD happens to use - called Common Crawl, see mastodon.gamedev.place/@Stealc… )


@Curator Hey Curator?
Do you have control over the robots.txt file of your instance?

I've recently learned that ALL of the data that Stability Diffusion uses, comes from Common Crawl, which scrapes the entire internet once a month.

Since so many people here use Alt Text, it's a hotbed of well-described image-text pairs (Juicy data for the AI evangelists).

Is it possible for you to block it?

#NoAi #CreateDontScrape #HumanArt


in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

I consider 'writing alt-text for art' to be an exercise in word-economy but descriptive richness. it's a fine balance to hit! and it can convey more about the image than just the individual descriptive statements: an Action Scene would fit well to use short, snappy statements, while a Mood Piece would be better served with longer, more elaborate sentences. getting *too* wordy I can guess would be offputting for screenreaders.
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

One thing the Fediverse could do: add a feature so that if you attach an image to a toot, the system quickly inspects the file and the image to determine if anyone else has uploaded the same thing recently and if so, do any identical images already have alt-text provided and if so, present it to the user who’s posting and ask ‘em, hey is this alt-text correct and if so, boom… user doesn’t have to type anything.
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

have you seen Alt Text as Poetry? It makes the argument for creative alt text as art in its own right

alt-text-as-poetry.net/

in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

I find it strange that someone would not want to explain the meaning of their work. You see art isn’t meant to be difficult and impenetrable and a struggle for people to understand. It is meant to convey a message. Alt text is of course essential to say to screen reader users what the picture of the text is and what the message is
in reply to berkes 🐝 🚐 🏄 🌱

@berkes 🐝 🚐 🏄 🌱 @Sjoerd Levelt @Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator :masto: an artist who claims that making their art more accessible ruins the art is (acting as) an asshole.

an artist who makes their art less accessible because doing so gives them a practical advantage, or because making the art more accessible would require an effort that they can't provide (for various reasons) is not acting like an asshole.

in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

Also, I don't think anyone expects artists to describe things pixel by pixel, but if you make abstract art, for instance, why not name colours, say something general about the work: where & when you made it, what mood drove you & how the resulting piece worked/works for you.
Talk about materials, size, what you think would be the best place to hang it.

There are so many things you can share, in so many ways.
Not doing so is to say, 'Fuck off, you're not welcome here.'

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mastodon - Collegamento all'originale

Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

@jonahstein @RPBook @jerry @paulligas What do you mean by 'enable'? Everyone is technically 'able' to add alt text to every image. The only limitation is that person's will/desire/energy levels/etc. What Alt4Me does is alerts the community that you'd like someone else to write the text for you; you can also just ask after posting the image, 'can someone please write alt text for me'. Then if/when someone does, you edit your post to add it to the media.
in reply to @zutalorz🤕

@zutalorz An app for what, writing the alt text? Nothing I know of, it would have to be something using AI image recognition probably . But you don't need an app, you can just ask the community - when you post an image, just say 'can someone provide alt text please', or see the other options at the bottom of mastodon.art/@Curator/10927904… :)

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