disclaimer: I have a fairly significant background in web design/coding as someone who doesn't do that for a living, and have studied the accessibility guidelines alongside that. i am not an accessibility expert, nor am i a screen-reader user.
"alt text is easy" is something i've seen a lot, coming from people who are frustrated by not having their needs met (or the needs of the folks around them) which is absolutely understandable. but it's not always easy, especially when you're like me and having that extra step before posting means you'll just not post at all. or, maybe, you're looking at a complex piece of art you've just finished and want to share with the world and you're thinking- where do i even start with this? In the spirit of making this easy to digest, i'll share my tips first and explain them with examples under a readmore.
- Consider the alt text part of your post. It is complementary to whatever else your post is about
- Don't forget someone has to read it. Front-load important information so they don't waste their time going through minutiae.
- Don't try to recreate the piece in words- recreate the feel of the piece. Keep in mind why you're posting it in the first place.
- Something is always better than nothing. Nobody is going to crucify you for alt text that's lacking, but it's shitty to just leave it blank.
- Don't "come back and add it later." (you won't). If you can't post now with alt text, save it for later. (yeah there are tags to get people to help with alt text, but be honest with yourself if you'll actually go through with updating)
it does kinda just come down to "just do it" but click through if you want more information (probably too much more)
it's posts like these that seriously make me wish more websites had community alt text features and/or features like Bluesky's "require alt text before posting" accessibility setting.
for an example of a community alt text feature, you can have a whitelist of people/accounts who're allowed to add alt text to images you post in case you're like me and straight up forget to add alt text half the time, if I even think about it to begin with. yes, this is me clowning on myself. yes, I know I need to do better in that regard. feel free to break out the torches and pitchforks and burn down my house. (for the record, I'm not a screen reader user or an accessibility expert. speaks volumes, I know.) still, the main reason I said "whitelist" instead of allowing anyone to add alt text to your posts is that such a feature can be abused. you might wind up with people posting racial slurs or whatever in your image's alt text.
but the sad thing is, I imagine most people just don't care about alt text, if they even know the feature exists. certainly most of the artists I follow on places like twitter don't add alt text to their art. I had to go out of my way to find an art post on twitter with alt text just now, and the post in question was from March of this year (2024). I also don't see people adding alt text in replies or retweets, if not outright telling artists about the lack of alt text in their posts.
that's another thing, though. how does one go about telling artists to add alt text to their posts, particularly when there are language (even cultural) barriers in play? how does one do that without coming across as a colossal asshole? being as polite as you can, yes, but I imagine even that might come off as being passive aggressive at the very least, depending on who you're dealing with. for the most part, we're all total strangers in this fucked up place we call "the world wide web". what might come across as polite to you and your friends might not be polite to whoever you're talking to. and obviously no one is obligated to tell artists about the lack of alt text in their posts or add their own alt text in a reply or retweet/reblog/etc.
this isn't me saying it's pointless to add alt text. no no no. I'd argue that doing that is more important now than ever. I'm just saying, artists - myself included - need to build habits revolving around adding alt text to their art. take the time to read posts like the one above if you have trouble thinking about what makes good alt text. and I think this world would be better if more websites had community alt text features.