Oh nice, Mastodon is getting an alt text reminder.

[podfeet@chaos.social]

@stefan One of the best things about Mastodon is that alt text seems to be the norm, not the exception. I get all kinds of great feedback from blind people thanking me, which makes me do an even better job of writing my descriptions. Sometimes I put in jokes only for them!

[stefan@stefanbohacek.online]

@podfeet Nice!

[proedie@mastodon.green]

@stefan The Cancel button is kind of useless though.

[stefan@stefanbohacek.online]

@proedie Is it?

I'd imagine this will bring you back to editing your post draft, then you can decide to remove the image and post without it.

[realcaseyrollins@noauthority.social]

@stefan Hasn't that always been a thing? I had to disable something like that here.

[vxo@digipres.club]

@stefan Excellent.
The Fedilab app I use on Android doesn't have that but it does show a big yellow missing alt warning under images if you're about to post without adding it

[stefan@stefanbohacek.online]

@realcaseyrollins I don't particularly recall this, and I'm looking at GitHub issues opened to add this from 2018, 2020, and 2022.

Perhaps they've experimented with something similar in the past? Some forks of Mastodon might have this feature already.

Or maybe you're thinking of confirmations shown before boosting/deleting a post?

[chriswood@mastodon.design]

@stefan yes! I think this is way better than receiving a comment from someone who slaps you on the wrist, or from staring at your post wondering why people aren’t boosting it. I would be interested to see how this goes.

[stefan@stefanbohacek.online]

@vxo Nice! Yeah, I would like Mastodon to do is as well.

[stefan@stefanbohacek.online]

@chriswood Yeah, I am not too sure how effective it is when people tell each other to add alt text.

Stefan Bohacek (@[email protected])

What convinced you to start adding alt text to images you post online? #AltText #accessibility #ImageDescription [ ] General knowledge about accessibility [ ] Seeing others do it [ ] Seeing others talk about it [ ] Seeing someone get nagged about it [ ] Someone I know explaining this to me [ ] Someone I know nagging me [ ] A stranger explaining this to me [ ] A stranger nagging me [ ] Something else [ ] I don't use alt text [ ] I can't use alt text

Stefan's Personal Mastodon Server (stefanbohacek.online)

I've only done it once or twice in the past, and those conversations were very polite, but ultimately didn't lead anywhere.

And yes, definitely looking forward to writing a follow up to https://stefanbohacek.com/blog/alt-text-health-check-image-accessibility-report-2/ in a few months!

[realcaseyrollins@noauthority.social]

@stefan Hmm now that I think about it I'm pretty sure #NoAuthority runs #GlitchSoc not #Mastodon so that might be it

[stefan@stefanbohacek.online]

@realcaseyrollins That's what I thought at first, but when I checked your profile and your server's nodeinfo endpoint, it looks like it's running vanilla Mastodon?

(I thought glitch-soc identifies itself in either of these places, but maybe I'm misremembering.)

[realcaseyrollins@noauthority.social]

@stefan We also might have switched back to vanilla #Mastodon at some point

[stefan@stefanbohacek.online]

@realcaseyrollins Ah, okay, now the mystery's solved!

[tom@tomkahe.com]

@stefan

There's been a number of times where I've searched for a photo I saw and found it immediately because the poster added very descriptive alt-text

[stefan@stefanbohacek.online]

@tom Yes, I've definitely taken advantage of that myself!

[bytebro@mastodonapp.uk]

@stefan
If you're using the WebUI, as I am, there's a splendid bot to follow that does essentially the same thing. Details in this post...

bytebro (@[email protected])

@[email protected] I've posted this before, but I'm pretty rubbish at remembering alt-txt, but since I followed @[email protected] I have no problems, because if I post an image without, it DMs me with a reminder so I can go back and add it 🙂

Mastodon App UK (mastodonapp.uk)

[stefan@stefanbohacek.online]

@bytebro Yes, I used to follow a similar bot back on Twitter, definitely helped me a lot to get used to always adding alt text. Now it's a second nature!

[medeavanamonde@chaosfem.tw]

@stefan @lisamelton
Getting?

[chriswood@mastodon.design]

@stefan thank you for helping raise awareness about accessibility! The post in a few months sounds great, looking forward to it.