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Stefan Bohacek

@shtrom Thank you for tagging me!

I'm not too sure if polls like this are all that insightful, to be quite honest. You can always look at the results of @AltTextHealthCheck (see also stefanbohacek.com/blog/alttext -- perhaps it would be useful to do another update, see if the trend has started to pick up.)

6 December at 12:51 | Wall-to-wall | Open on stefanbohacek.online
18 comments
Alina Leonova

@stefan Thanks, I’ll check it out and compare the results of the poll to the info I’ll get there.

6 December at 13:13 | Open on wandering.shop
Stefan Bohacek

@AlinaLeonova Ah, sorry, my reply was aimed at the person tagging me, I did not mean to be too dismissive!

Either way, you're welcome! I do find that results of these self-reporting polls skew a bit more positive, while this bot (not made by me, by the way) shows the average rate of around 35-40% of images having alt text.

And that is not to say anything about the quality of the alt text, which can sometimes be pretty inadequate.

6 December at 13:18 | Open on stefanbohacek.online
Alina Leonova

@stefan Oh, that’s much lower than I expected 😔 Yeah, I think those who don’t do it might just not vote. I’ve seen that some people get annoyed when asked to add alt-text and even when others do it for them in the comments (which is such an asshole response!), so they’re probably annoyed by the poll as well 😁

6 December at 13:27 | Open on wandering.shop
Stefan Bohacek

@AlinaLeonova Yeah, I saw the recent conversation around the topic of asking people to provide alt text on their images (not a fan!) and writing alt text for them (much better approach!).

Interestingly, and again, this is a self-reported poll, so take it with a grain of salt, but it seems that most people don't mind this.

stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/1

If you're interested, I just put some more relevant polls here: stefanbohacek.com/blog/polls-a

@AlinaLeonova Yeah, I saw the recent conversation around the topic of asking people to provide alt text on their images (not a fan!) and writing alt text for them (much better approach!).

Interestingly, and again, this is a self-reported poll, so take it with a grain of salt, but it seems that most people don't mind this.

6 December at 13:30 | Open on stefanbohacek.online
Alina Leonova

@stefan Block the person? Wow, I didn’t expect anyone to do it. Just 1% but still 🤦🏻‍♀️ And I’ve seen people insult those who add alt-text for them in the comments (there was a thread about it recently from an art account, I’ll try to find it), which is just… I don’t even know what to say about those people.

6 December at 13:46 | Open on wandering.shop
Alina Leonova
Stefan Bohacek

@AlinaLeonova Yes, saw this, thank you!

And yeah, I've read about people getting blocked without being rude or snarky when providing alt text, I think some people just get too defensive about this, see it as a judgement no matter how you phrase your reply.

And genuinely I don't know what the best solution is here.

In the article I shared in my original post, it's clear that the interface and available tools can make a big difference.

How to change the culture though? I'm not so sure!

6 December at 13:55 | Open on stefanbohacek.online
Alina Leonova

@stefan How to change the culture is the most important question! Tools are definitely important. Posts from blind users who say how alt-text impacts their experience have made a big impression on me, though admittedly I was already using alt-text. Conversations about it, education. It’s already much better here in the Fediverse than anywhere else, but we still have a long way to go.

6 December at 14:01 | Open on wandering.shop
Stefan Bohacek replied to Alina

@AlinaLeonova Definitely! This is the main motivation behind @alttexthalloffame, education, and inspiration.

6 December at 14:22 | Open on stefanbohacek.online
Laberpferd

@stefan @AlinaLeonova
I am strongly on the opinion that "alt text" itself is the wrong solution

What i mean is, i would be strongly prefer if the standard would be to have much more "normal" text here like 1k or more bytes, and then this one text just describes everything including the picture

6 December at 17:24 | Open on sueden.social
Stefan Bohacek replied to Laberpferd

@Laberpferd Interesting idea!

Personally I prefer the image description to be "with" the image, but I'd love to hear from folks who actually use screen readers, if this makes a difference to them.

Also, interestingly, there is a way to embed the description in the image file itself, which would be great for sharing the same image via different channels, it's just not very widely used.

community.adobe.com/t5/illustr

@AlinaLeonova

@Laberpferd Interesting idea!

Personally I prefer the image description to be "with" the image, but I'd love to hear from folks who actually use screen readers, if this makes a difference to them.

Also, interestingly, there is a way to embed the description in the image file itself, which would be great for sharing the same image via different channels, it's just not very widely used.

6 December at 17:37 | Open on stefanbohacek.online
David O'Brien replied to Stefan

The problem with this approach is the same image may mean different things in different contexts.

Exif data could possibly provide some sort of “default” or fallback alternative text but it still needs human curation.

You may find this helpful. I hope you do.

#a11y

design.scotentblog.co.uk/provi

@stefan @Laberpferd @AlinaLeonova

6 December at 18:14 | Open on mastodon.scot
Rusty Bertrand

@AlinaLeonova @stefan
Block the disabled. That'll teach us to see better.

I can't even get autocorrect to work.

6 December at 15:53 | Open on kolektiva.social
U.Lancier

@AlinaLeonova @stefan I don't consider it bad but helpful if someone adds an Alt text as a comment. And usually I see them later added to the picture, with thanks even. It might be just my bubble, but prefer to think the fedi people are generally that nice and caring.

6 December at 15:39 | Open on social.tchncs.de
Rusty Bertrand

@AlinaLeonova @stefan
Or they are disabled and can't do it all the time. Some of us are olny half blind.

6 December at 15:52 | Open on kolektiva.social
Robert Kingett

@stefan @shtrom @AltTextHealthCheck They aren’t honestly. what’s more helpful is just providing the access. If anybody actively prevents you from providing the access, that’s when you can get firm and aggressive with them. There are people on here that will actively do things like, type, purposefully left blank in the alt text field. For these kinds of people, education is never going to work because they’re providing a hostile infrastructure so for those kinds of people, I think we need to be more aggressive not less

@stefan @shtrom @AltTextHealthCheck They aren’t honestly. what’s more helpful is just providing the access. If anybody actively prevents you from providing the access, that’s when you can get firm and aggressive with them. There are people on here that will actively do things like, type, purposefully left blank in the alt text field. For these kinds of people, education is never going to work because they’re providing a hostile infrastructure so for those kinds of people, I think we need to be more...

6 December at 14:28 | Open on caneandable.social
Jupiter Rowland
@Robert Kingett Honest question from an alt-text and image description perfectionist to a blind user: When is it actually accessible enough that whoever posts an image doesn't have to fear repercussions?

Okay, there has to be an alt-text. It has to actually describe the image. So much is clear to me.

And I guess that while at least some blind people in the Fediverse treasure whimsy higher than accuracy, others may want alt-text to be accurate.

But it looks to me like there is a rather narrow margin between alt-text with not enough details and alt-text that's too long and/or too detailed. This isn't communicated anywhere. It's unclear, too, whether that margin is always the same, or whether it shifts with the content of the image, the context and someone's individual idea of who the audience of an image post is.

And seriously, there are images that simply cannot be described in a way that's perfectly ideal and useful for absolutely everyone out there. I've posted such images in the past, and my image descriptions must have broken all length records in the Fediverse. But I think not everyone is happy about having to read through such monsters.

CC: @Stefan Bohacek @Olivier Mehani @Alina Leonova

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta
@Robert Kingett Honest question from an alt-text and image description perfectionist to a blind user: When is it actually accessible enough that whoever posts an image doesn't have to fear repercussions?

6 December at 14:59 | Open on hub.netzgemeinde.eu
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