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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: .

reshared this

in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
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

Shari Emerson
Shari Emerson
• •
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

Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
• •

@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 https://wandering.shop/@mrszee/109925908918325703 from today, and https://mastodon.art/@welshpixie/109375747560676293 - 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)

MrsZee

2023-02-25 14:44:16


your alt text raises the bar

@Jason Galla
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

berkes 🐝 🚐 🏄 🌱
berkes 🐝 🚐 🏄 🌱
• •
isn't that entirely up to the artist, though?

An artist, in my view, has no obligation to make their art accessible to everyone. Not IRL, nor digital. If an artist feels it detracts from their vision of the art to make it accessible, isn't that tradeoff entirely theirs to make?
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

TatiMitStift
TatiMitStift
• •
I don't like how much "I'm not using alt-text, because I wanna let my art speak for itself" sounds so stereotypical artist-like :'D
Questa voce è stata modificata (1 anno fa)
Unknown parent

Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
• •
@martyn People can absolutely do that if they want to, yeah. I often say 'the photo feels moody/cozy/ominous' etc. with my stuff. But it's not a requirement so there's no reason for people NOT to add alt-text if they want to steer away from 'explaining the meaning' of their art to someone.
@Martyn
Unknown parent

Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
• •
@paulligas @jerry .art has a thing in our robots.txt file that blocks the crawler that Stable Diffusion gets its data from, at least.
@Jerry Bell :verified_paw: :donor: :verified_dragon: :rebelverified:​
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

Jason Galla
Jason Galla
• •
"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
https://www.sugimotohiroshi.com/photogenic-drawing
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.

Photogenic Drawing — Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto
in reply to Jason Galla

Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
• •
@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)
@Jason Galla
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
• •
@gallaimage For a 'known' piece of work, providing the title and artist means the reader can look up and further read about that piece of art on their own time, if they want to.
@Jason Galla
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

Jason Galla
Jason Galla
• •
As someone who spends WAY too much time in one's professional life wrestling with "use cases". Are there statements from alt text users of the text that THEY find useful. Poorly informed solutions are not well grounded.
Questa voce è stata modificata (1 anno fa)
in reply to Jason Galla

Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
• •
@gallaimage Yup, all the advice I give on how to write alt-text (https://mastodon.art/@Curator/109279035107793247) is based on feedback I've had from many blind and partially sighted friends and fedi users, and there are copious articles like https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/30/22587544/instagram-twitter-tiktok-accessibility-blind-low-vision out there that cover the topic :)

‘May be an image’: what it’s like browsing Instagram while blind

Accessibility on social networks like Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok hasn’t fully caught up, and the results can sound ridiculous. Automatic alt text based on machine learning doesn’t quite cut it.
Kait Sanchez (The Verge)
@Jason Galla
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

Jason Galla
Jason Galla
• •
Thanks. I'll read these. I searched last weekend. Found a lot on accessibility, but not targeted to Mastodon or alt text authoring.
Questa voce è stata modificata (1 anno fa)
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

RonWodaski
RonWodaski
• •
@gallaimage My own approach to alt text is to situate it somewhere between dry description and poetry.
@Jason Galla
Unknown parent

Jason Galla
Jason Galla
• •
@slevelt @berkes Thanks, Slevelt. This was the realization for me: description != explanation.
@berkes 🐝 🚐 🏄 🌱 @Sjoerd Levelt
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

Liath LaVerne Hawke
Liath LaVerne Hawke
• •
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.
Questa voce è stata modificata (1 anno fa)
in reply to Liath LaVerne Hawke

Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
• •
@HawkeLiath Backing this up by saying I've sold plenty of my very visual work to blind and partially sighted people because they had an idea of my work from the alt-text and thought it sounded pretty. ^.^
@Liath LaVerne Hawke
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

Liath LaVerne Hawke
Liath LaVerne Hawke
• •
And I've also heard stories of blind parents who looked for artwork for their grown kids.
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

missmeowolotov 🐈‍⬛
missmeowolotov 🐈‍⬛
• •
it's a cop out for people who aren't creative enough to describe their own art and want to put that burden on to their audience.

You can describe the image without describing any implied meaning.
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

Ithanul
Ithanul
• •
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.
Unknown parent

Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
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.
@Please Caption Bot @Jerry Bell :verified_paw: :donor: :verified_dragon: :rebelverified:​ @Jonah Stein
Unknown parent

berkes 🐝 🚐 🏄 🌱
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?
@Sjoerd Levelt
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

Benn Berkley :startrek:
Benn Berkley :startrek:
• •
I’ve begun to enjoy it really. It gives me a REASON to be overtly descriptive, something I have to resist the urge to do in my stories 🤣
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

P Stewart
P Stewart
• •
@paulligas @jerry Does SD actually respect it? I honestly assumed that when it came to robots.txt artbot crawlers would use it as a target list, not a "keep out" sign.
@Jerry Bell :verified_paw: :donor: :verified_dragon: :rebelverified:​
in reply to P Stewart

Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
• •

@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 https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@Stealcase/109531062758118880 )

Stealcase

2022-12-17 21:09:42


@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


@Jerry Bell :verified_paw: :donor: :verified_dragon: :rebelverified:​ @P Stewart
Unknown parent

Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
• •
@I_Like_Books perfectly valid <3 ( @james I don't know if you have the emoji on your instance but feel free to copy :helpdescribe: from us!)
@james
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

Dr. Dan Killam
Dr. Dan Killam
• •
We can describe what is viewable to the eye without bringing in any higher level interpretation. And the nonvisual reaction to the language only strengthens the meaning of the art.
Unknown parent

Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
• •
@SusanHR Yeah - I keep saying that anything is better than the screenreader reading out the default 'image' (may vary by screenreader, I think) when there's no alt text.
@SusanHR
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

Matthew Loxton
Matthew Loxton
• •
Thanks for reiterating this. I never used to add alt text to images, but now I understand the importance and strive to always do so.

Question though. Usually the images are for a short story. So should ai include the url to where the story will appear, or is that just self-promoting?
in reply to Matthew Loxton

Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
• •
@mloxton I would put that in the body of the toot so that it's clickable, rather than the alt text :)
@Matthew Loxton
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

Traveling Piano Man
Traveling Piano Man
• •
Why is there a space in your post between the hashtag and letters... as in "# Alt4Me" When I post that, there should be no space between the hashtag and letters, correct?
in reply to Traveling Piano Man

Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
• •
@dannykean Correct - it's because the tag is used to ask for alt text which is not applicable to this post and it doesn't need to show up in hashtag searches for that tag, so I broke the tag.
@Traveling Piano Man
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

Traveling Piano Man
Traveling Piano Man
• •
So if I put the hashtag on a photo post with no information... there will be some way that alt text will be applied?
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

Christopher Mackay 🇨🇦
Christopher Mackay 🇨🇦
• •
frankly, even that “I don’t want to explain” explanation reeks of art-world bullshit.
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

hyratel
hyratel
• •
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

Brian Dear
Brian Dear
• •
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

ThreeDollarBill
ThreeDollarBill
• •
"get over yourself" is pretty ugly. Could have done without that.
in reply to ThreeDollarBill

Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
• •
@3DBill dismissing people's accessibility needs because you place a higher value on 'the meaning of your art' is pretty ugly too and nobody was calling *that* out.
@ThreeDollarBill
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

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

https://alt-text-as-poetry.net/

Alt Text as Poetry

Alt text is an essential part of web accessibility. It is often disregarded altogether or understood through the lens of compliance, as an unwelcome burden to be met with minimum effort.
alt-text-as-poetry.net
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

Herstory
Herstory
• •
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 🐝 🚐 🏄 🌱

Elena ``of Valhalla''
Elena ``of Valhalla''
•
@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.
@Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator @berkes 🐝 🚐 🏄 🌱 @Sjoerd Levelt
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

Jan Thie
Jan Thie
• •
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.'
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

Pablo Fernandez
Pablo Fernandez
• •
They seem to be confusing the alt text with the "title" of the image. I best most people never ever see an alt text these days. Sometimes I do add the same text to both alt text and title, but I haven't done it in ages.
Unknown parent

Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
• •
@slevelt it's always from the instances we have blocked/silenced, confirming why they're blocked/silenced in the first place :apartyblobcat:
@Sjoerd Levelt
Unknown parent

Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
• •
@wohali Hi! See our about page at https://mastodon.art/about for the credit for that one, you can ping them to ask to use it ^.^

Mastodon.ART

Mastodon.ART — Your friendly home on the fediverse for all things creative, all on a platform that is community-owned and ad-free. NO CRYPTOART / NFTs ALLOWED.
Mastodon hosted on mastodon.art
@wohali
Unknown parent

Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
• •
@slevelt Haha yep
@Sjoerd Levelt
Unknown parent

Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
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.
@Jerry Bell :verified_paw: :donor: :verified_dragon: :rebelverified:​ @Russell Phillips @Jonah Stein
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

thefathippy
thefathippy
• •
Yes. Alts should be a description of what can be seen in the image, not a dissertation on the meanings and thoughts of the creator.
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

@zutalorz🤕
@zutalorz🤕
• •
i did a whole post about this bc
i do alt text but i am not good at it and its very difficult for me bc of damage to my visual cortex i am not able to visualize which is necessary for a lot of writing/reading. does anyone know of an app i could use for this?
this was my post:
https://haunted.computer/@zutalorz/109893277499010724
in reply to @zutalorz🤕

Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
• •
@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 https://mastodon.art/@Curator/109279041824961297 :)
@@zutalorz🤕
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

eyrea
eyrea
• •
That has to be the most silly excuse for not writing alt text I have ever heard.
Unknown parent

Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
• •
@I_Like_Books yep! :D
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

Probably Paul 🌍
Probably Paul 🌍
• •
I always use alt-text, and won't share anything that doesn't, but did see a partially-sighted person saying on here that they were tired of being told to add alt-text because it's a challenge for them.

So maybe we shouldn't be too quick to judge those who don't add it.
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

ms_xenophora 🐚
ms_xenophora 🐚
• •

Wait. I'M supposed to know what the picture I made means before I post it?!

D'oh!! :o

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