How fitting the image in the post lacks alt text. 🤦
The image has alt text. Maybe your client doesn’t support it though.
That’s interesting. At my instance & the community’s, I’m seeing
<img src="https://sopuli.xyz/pictrs/image/c274526d-0ee6-4954-9897-100010dc5571.webp" alt="" title="" loading="lazy">attribute
altentirely blank. Yet in yours & the author’s, the attribute is filled. Seems they run later versions of lemmy with better accessibility: added alt_text for image posts introduced in version 0.19.4.I stand corrected: instances get different accessibility experiences. 😞
This feels like an apt microcosm of a lot of accessibility issues — how even when people do what they can to make things accessible (such as adding alt text), fragmentation and complexity leads to an unequal distribution of accessibility. Standardisation can help, but I’ve also seen projects that lose sight of ultimate aims (such as but not limited to greater accessibility) when they treat standardisation of protocols etc as a goal in and of itself. When it gets to that point, I feel like we’re more likely to see a proliferation of standards rather than a consolidation. It gets messy, is my point.
I find it super interesting as someone who has a few different (and sometimes competing) access needs, because some of the most upsetting times that I’ve faced inaccessible circumstances have been where there was no-one at fault.
Just realized I’ve seen the push multiple times to include alt text, but not guidance on how.
Is there an actual etiquette to follow or even a specific format for alt text? Or just a sentence describing the image and call it a day?
Maybe this blog post is of use. Good Alt Text, Bad Alt Text — Making Your Content Perceivable.
If you don’t feel like reading the entire post you can skip to “Writing good alt text — Context is key”.
The Web Accessibility Initiative has tons of content. For images, you can start from their tips to get started & tutorials that links to.
Here specifically, you can learn how to set alt text in markdown.
Ok, that’s helpful for providing alt text for images inside the body of a post.
Bus what about image posts? When using the web interface I don’t see any opportunity for entering the alt text. 🤔
When using the web interface I don’t see any opportunity for entering the alt text.
Apparently, some instances offer it: you might want to ask your instance administrator to upgrade. If yours doesn’t offer it, the text alternative can be adjacent as stated in the success criterion for non-text content
All non-text content that is presented to the user has a text alternative that serves the equivalent purpose
and the techniques for it identified with prefix G. The
altattribute is merely 1 way to accomplish that.When it’s a screenshot of a webpage, a link to the source often makes sense as a text alternative. I see way too many images that could be blockquotes & links, which are often superior to an image: more accessible & more useful to everyone else. That’s often the case of good accessibility: it benefits everyone else.
I tend to explain what it is, and what is the important part. Thinking about it from the perspective of what someone might need to know while also respecting their time. I think “Screen shot of Lemmy post feed with nav bar at top, first post says “blah”, second post says “blah blah”, third post says…”, I think that’s too much unnecessary detail. So I’d do something like “Screen shot of Lemmy post feed, showing the third post called “Blah blah” has a green highlight over the first word” or whatever the message is I’m trying to get across with the screenshot.
I don’t know if there is etiquette or a specific format but I would write as much as is needed to convey the reason you’re including the image (whether that is a sentence or 100 words), striking a balance between making sure someone who is relying on the alt text can understand everything they need to know while also respecting their time.
As a video engineer on events, I always love having to accomodate live captioning and signers.
It means more layers on the screen (IE picture in picture), more chance to make things look good, and it means the production company / client / organiser has actually thought about their event.I always enjoy gigs with wheelchair accessible stages, captioning, hearing loops, and signers are good gigs.
That’s amazing. I’d love to hear from one of the audience about how they found the experience.
You’d love to hear?
Fuck, I laughed, I’m going to hell… Take your upvote
And to alt-text an embedded image in markdown:
Now this I did not know. Every day’s a school day.
I didn’t know you could do that! I’ll try it, let me know if it works.
FYI alt text only applies when the image fails to load. You can get hover text by adding quoted text after the url.
Preview
Alt text is read by screen readers even if the image loads.
Ok, I can’t imagine blind people able to use a mouse very well. So I also imagine they have a brail keyboard. But does that mean they are set up with speakers and a keyboard and they learn how to navigate a computer really slowly, and that modern webpages are very… Noisy?
You can try the built-in screen reader/accessibility mode in your OS and blow your mind.
Neat. For me on mobile, the hover text takes precedence but they both work.
I am using Thunder, if I tap the image for both of yours (to make full screen) I can see the alt text on both. Not while I am in the post though, scrolling through replies.
I may have to tap on more images from here on. Thanks to you both for the info and examples!
On Eternity, I can see the alt-text when I long-press on the image.
it does.
Is this a mute/deaf person giving a talk, or a talking/hearing person being incredibly based?
My assumption is the latter, which is awesome.
Given the username, I’d say that is the case: https://terptheatre.org/
"TerpTheatre is both a source of information about theatre interpreting and a tradition of theatre interpreters in the shadowed strategy. "
Are there any blind people on Lemmy, screenreading this? I get why alt-text is useful functionally on things like application interfaces, and instructive or educational text, but do you actually enjoy hearing a screen reader say "A meme of four oanels. First panel. An image of a young man in a field. He is Anakin Skywalker as played by that guy who played Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars prequels. He says ‘bla bla bla’. Next frame. An image of a young woman. She is Padme as played by Natalie Portman. She is smiling. She says “bla bla bla, right?”
I personally know many blind people on the fediverse, yes.
the question is do you need at least one blind person to justify alt text or do you want the alt text to make it possible for blind people or people with impaired vision to enjoy if they ever stumble upon it?
This! I often hear certain restaurants don’t have ramps because disabled people don’t eat there. And we don’t because there’s no ramp.
I think they simply dont want to waste their time. Its a legitimate question, comes up with handicapped regulations on physical businesses too, although that usually costs money and time.
oh what an inconvenience… I wish I was blind so I didn’t have to spend 4 more minutes transcribing 20 words on a meme.
even if you think it’s a waste of time, I didn’t even comment on the validity of the question. I just gave them the actual consideration they should have.
oh and even if you completely ignore accessibility on that front, transcribing images makes them infinitely more searchable. no one knows what a title would be, people usually don’t put anything helpful or something you can remember. but if you know some of the words you might be able to find it.
it’s like finding songs by searching lyrics from a random part of the song you heard or remember. it would be so much harder if you had to know the title.
There’s also the element of wasting the blind person’s time. I work in enterprise software and our application meets WCAG guidelines but… it’s a busy, text-heavy, actions-heavy application. It can take 5 minutes for a screen reader to read the entire page. Other websites are worse - images as buttons, flavour images and hero banners and icons everywhere. Again, a much more accessible version is just presenting them with what they actually want - a cleaner, leaner, more contextual page like the ones we built in the 90s before images loaded instantly.
So part of me wonders if blind people actually enjoy “listening to memes” or if they’d rather skip it and hear a text-based joke or an audio/video joke. I did specifically say I wanted a blind person’s opinion on it.
I think you’ve underestimated the wordcount and I think you don’t get how memes are shared if you think adding 4 minutes to their re-transmission wouldn’t matter. I cars that blind people enjoy the internet but I absolutely do not think “searchability” is a good reason to transcribe “Drake meme but it’s an animal girl. Top panel. Animal girl looking repulsed. The item she is repulsed by is the logo of a Linux package manager called Flatpak…”
I specifically said searchable referring to images in general, not memes. I don’t think people search memes that often.
i also didn’t specify verbosity. Blind people are people, idk why we’re talking like they’re a different species. Whether or not you should alt text an image is directly related to whether or not you consider that image part of the content.
a meme is the content, when someone is looking at a post that’s what they’re looking at and reading. if someone wouldn’t want to read it they can stop reading as soon as they see that it’s a meme. if they want to read it they can keep going.
so no, I don’t think meme transcriptions should be as verbose. so it’s just “animal girl is repulsed by flatpak”. you’re explaining it to people who don’t see as well, not people who were born yesterday.
If an uncaptioned tree falls in the woods without any blind people around…
Its a genuine question: how much enjoyment does someone with a visual impairment get from a meme that’s purely a visual gag? You could go through a lot of work to make a cliff face wheelchair accessible but it will never be the same experience as rock climbing
Blindness is a spectrum! So for example, someone could maybe make out the stick figure shape in a comic but not the speech bubbles. Most blind people can still see things but it greatly helps to have things read out as an aid to quite literally see the whole picture :)
And now I wanna try rock climbing as a wheelchair user just because, lol
Very fair point 👉
your analogy makes no sense, and neither does your argument.
first of all the purpose of making places wheelchair accessible is to make it possible for people in wheelchairs to go there, not to give them “the experience” whatever the fuck that is supposed to be.
like, what do you even know what the wheelchair experience is like, and what makes you think what people in wheelchairs want is the experience of rock climbers, rather than the ability to experience something themselves? have you ever seen an interpreter sign a rap song? what do you think that’s for? to stimulate hearing?
second of all, memes are rarely “purely visual” gags. I don’t even know what makes you even think that. because they’re in an image format? you do realize a woman staring at her boyfriend who’s checking out another woman is in no way a visual gag, right? it’s not about how they look, it’s what they’re doing.
or, to argue on a more basic level, if it’s purely visual why does it have fucking words?
My question simplified: when is the juice worth the squeeze? Most memes have text but lose their humor without the visual aspect.
It’s the difference between a comedian nailing the delivery of a punchline with a perfect impression + cadence + body work and reading a transcript of the bit.
In your rap interpretation example there are both visual and lyrical components to the performance, both of which are significant and individually enjoyable pieces of the art. A better example would be handing sheet music to a deaf person so they could enjoy an orchestra on tv.
On the girlfriend gag: it absolutely is visual. The nuance of the expressions and body language directly increase the effort and skill required to reproduce it.
I could accurately describe it “A man holding hands with woman who looks at him. He looks at a third woman. Captioned […]”. I could spend more time to better convey the humor but the delivery is no longer the meme. It can only ever be as good as my own ability to describe it in a parallel work.
From that logic, would the blind even be enjoying same content anymore? There are images that translate easily and readily to text, and I agree that everyone should be in the habit of trying to do it. But in making it a rock solid rule it kind of loses the spirit of inclusion in favor of dogma.
On a more basic level, if you could easily write the joke in text why is it an image?
alt text is a part of the post quality like any other
I usually either write a proper alt-text if it’s a non-joke image, or an xkcd style extra joke if it’s meant to be a meme.
Well, I do on Mastodon. I know exactly where the button for that is on that platform. Gimme a sec to check where it is on Lemmy.
In jerboa on android there’s a dedicated alt-text field above the “body” field
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I’d probably have just left - wasting my time isn’t the answer for a shitty venue.
Of course you would, because you don’t need a paycheck.
