The amount of hate I've seen directed at alt-text and at people who ask for, and provide, alt-text recently is disgusting.

Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

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 -

🧵

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,

🧵

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 -

🧵

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 -
🧵

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 -

🧵

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 -

🧵

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. t'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 -

🧵

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.

🧵

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.

🧵

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.

🧵

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 -

🧵

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

(Just a note on the above though, every building should be designed with accessibility in mind, every presentation should be made with accessibility in mind. We should aim for a society where we look after and provide for each other, not where we ostracise and exclude people who have needs different to our own. You know who did that? The actual fascists. Don't be a fascist.)

Clare Hooley

@Curator I’m sure someone knows more on this, but I believe having an alt text field that is empty (not with the words ‘blank’) is a valid technique for hiding images from screen readers that are purely decorative so as to prevent word clutter (e.g. a stock image that really would just not add anything to the content by being described). It’s something I can’t do here as I can on my own website but it would be rare I’d want to (my social media images are likely crucial info).

Ovro

@Curator The difference alt text makes:

Bodhipaksa

@clare_hooley @Curator 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.

Clare Hooley

@bodhipaksa @Curator yeh, not many, but perhaps not none.

Sini Tuulia

@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!

LJ

@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.

Mx Verda

@Curator somebody else has probably said, but in case they haven’t:

Alt text also helps (some) autistic people and (some) language learners by clarifying ‘obvious’ points of interest, keywords, and sometimes context.

It’s also probably scraped for regurgitative AI because wtf do they use that *isn’t* stolen, but I think the massive help to diverse groups of people is still more impactful.