lori

It feels like a good time to make this post with so many new users, but I want to preface it by saying this isn't one of those "lecturing new users to tell them how we do things around here" posts, this has been a problem on cohost for quite a while now and a bunch of new users from a platform with the same problem is likely to just exacerbate it.

Cohost needs more alt text. You need to be describing your images for people who cannot see them.

There's been a weird trend of push back I've seen in the last year towards alt text. Not just on cohost, on quite a few platforms. I've seen people complain about fedi as a social platform specifically because "they expect me to write alt text every time".

Now, I'm going to talk about fedi quite a bit here. There's good reason for that but this isn't the fedi good/cohost bad post some of you will expect it to be. There's some bad fedi in here too and this is more of a general Internet problem. And if you're thinking "what about fedi/other platforms why are you telling US this like it's our fault only" I've posted countless times about alt text on those other platforms too. Like, a lot. You're about to find out I don't shut up about this.

Most of the parts of fedi that the type of people reading this on cohost would ever end up interacting with (so not, say, the Gab or Truth Social types of servers) insist on alt text as a cultural norm. You know what the result of that has been? I have never interacted with more blind/visually impaired people in my life. I think the only space online I've seen more blind people has been playing MUDs and I wasn't really in those to socialize. But there's a ton of them! Which makes me realize how many platforms I've been on where there AREN'T. I never actually thought that hard about alt text, besides knowing it was a good idea and best practice. In fact there's a lot of things I never thought about with blind internet users. Like, you reading this may have long held associations that someone not having an avatar means they're likely a spam account. You may even block them immediately. But you know who else tends to not have avatars? Blind people who can't see them. Some DO, but a lot don't, because...why would they? It's not a part of their experience with the internet. Why should they need to have one just to appease people who aren't blind?

A common thread I see in a lot of alt text discussions on social media is that people who don't need it tend to treat it almost like a thought exercise. Alt text is some nebulous thing that you know you need to have but everyone makes it sound so goddamn hard to do, and why do you even need to? Nobody you know needs it, right? Being on fedi really drives home to me that the reason you don't have blind followers is because your posts aren't accessible to them, OR the platform you're on isn't. I didn't go seeking out blind people to follow. It just happened naturally like any other follows. But it's because they feel like they can thrive there.

Now again, I said I wasn't here to advertise fedi. Fedi is where I saw a recent example of that 'thought exercise' mentality I mentioned. A user I follow was venting about how they told someone their alt text was unclear and the users reaction was to get angry about how they have to do alt text at all. Someone else replied to this mutual of mine chastising them for not offering to help with better alt text instead of complaining. Problem is: they are literally fucking blind and cannot see the image. They cannot help them write the alt text because they are the one who needs it in the first place. And this is exactly the mentality I am seeing. People are getting wrapped up in alt text debates without ever remembering that the people who need it are real and cannot see your goddamn image and have no idea what it is. And this is the thing about having actual blind mutuals on a site now, I'm not doing alt text out of some social pressures that I'm supposed to hypothetically, I'm doing it for people who I actually talk to. They're real.

Now a lot of people who need alt text are extremely hesitant to suggest anyone needs to improve theirs even if it sucks out of fear they'll just give up doing it entirely. And I've seen a lot of this mentality that alt text is a burden or too hard, some even arguing that because of ADHD or whatever (and I say this having it myself) that they can't be expected to do alt text. I've seen this on other sites and I've seen it on cohost. To me this is like saying you can't put a wheelchair ramp to your business because it's just too much effort. It's a fuck you to the people who need it, and sincerely need it. It's hard for me to get things done with ADHD, but it's IMPOSSIBLE for someone who is blind to see an image you post.

I think a lot of the reasons though that people get so pushy about not wanting to do alt text is because they have an extremely wrong idea about what alt text should look like. And I've exclusively seen these wrong ideas about what alt text should look like from people who do not need or use screen readers, who have never even once tried a screen reader. People are getting their idea of what alt text is from from people who have no fucking clue what is actually helpful to blind/visually impaired folks.

It's worth noting, I'm not blind or at this point visually impaired myself. I used to have significantly worse than average vision, like "can only get something in focus within an inch from my eyes' vision, and did my whole life until getting LASIK last year. However because I had to get PRK (because my eyes were so bad), my recovery time was a few months, and my vision was different shades of usable during that time. I couldn't read during the first week or two, and it was very difficult for several more weeks. I had the text on my phone at max size. I made a lot of use of screen readers. I learned how many websites don't work with screen readers and I learned how many sites and apps are entirely unusable when you scale the text up, this one included.

This is not to say "I totally know what it's like guys!", this is to say that someone who has never experienced the internet this way knows even less so what that experience actually is. And even just dealing with it for ONE week would make you understand how frustrating it is. And I also want to be clear that I don't want this to come off as speaking for blind people, I'm pretty directly echoing things they have told me about alt text, and what they want it to be for them. But like any group there's a lot of opinions out there, I've done some open questions/polls for weird alt text situations and I don't get one answer every time, but do tend to get a strong majority.

So I've rambled on a lot here but I do want to end this with some actual concrete pieces of advice, that I have gotten from people who actually need you to use alt text:

• Yes, you absolutely need to be putting alt text on your image posts. No there isn't an excuse not to unless you're literally the kind of person who needs the alt text on your posts. Your posts are literally not possible for people who need alt text to perceive. This is a gotta have, not a It Would Be Nice. Your images are just going to say "image" to them. And this is my go to example of why it matters: imagine a post that has the text "say hello to my little friend". You know it has an image but can't see the image. The post is WILDLY different in tone and meaning and appropriateness depending on whether that's an image of a small cute kitten or an image of the posters dick.

• A lot of people online have misled you about alt text. Your alt text does not need to describe every fucking object in the image. If you are holding up a scarf you knitted, you don't need to describe what kind of wood floor is in the background behind your hand. It doesn't matter. Ask yourself if someone looking at your image with their eyeballs would give a shit about this detail. If not, don't add it. Your alt text doesn't need to be flowery or emotional or beautiful. In fact it's usually BETTER if it's utilitarian. Seriously, try using a screen reader and listen to how it long it takes to hear the text read out loud. Experienced screen reader users do have the playback speed pretty high, but still, everything you write takes time to hear. Which leads us to...

• Make your alt text focus on what your point in posting the image was. And as a sub point: context can change the alt text. I can post the same image of my dog on a couch to show off the dog or show off the couch. If the dog is the point I'm not going to describe the couch (beyond saying she's asleep on the couch or whatever). If I'm showing off the couch I'll probably mention the dog being there because people in the replies might reference her, but I don't need to go into detail about what she's doing or looks like. She's not the point.

• Text in an image should be transcribed WHEN relevant. For example if you post a screenshot of something someone said, which is a scenario where the text itself is the point, you need to put the text from it in the alt text. On platforms where it doesn't fit I generally note in the alt text that I've put the transcription as a reply and put it there, whatever is easiest for where you're posting it. Also, you need to put the actual text. I have literally seen people post callout receipts where the alt text says something like "this user posting sexist things at me". That's a value judgement that blind people need to be allowed to make for themselves like anyone else reading it (they're even allowed to be totally wrong like everyone else). But, sometimes the text DOESN'T matter. Imagine, say, a TV show or movie that shows a fake newspaper with a funny headline. Think "old man yells at cloud". You need to put the headline text, that's the point. In this example the image of Grandpa Simpson yelling at the cloud shaking his fist is worth describing. But if there's ten thousand words of fake article text on there? You do not have to alt text that shit. Remember what I said earlier: if someone looking at it wouldn't give a shit, nobody wants to listen to it read out loud to them for several minutes either.

• That thing I said about how alt text should be more utilitarian than you've maybe been told? Alt text isn't the place for jokes. By that I mean alt text isn't a joke. Alt text can be funny sometimes. But don't make alt text unnecessarily long just for the sake of a joke, and more importantly don't make a joke that then fails to actually describe the image. Frankly, you don't need to get that cute about alt text. It's not really there for your entertainment, it's an important accessibility tool. It doesn't have to be joyless at all but the goal isn't for you, the person who doesn't need it to access your posts, to have fun with it. Your enjoyment writing it is not the most important thing. Also, when describing your visual art, focus on what you want the viewer to get out of it, but remember that you won't always be able to make your visual art matter "visually" to someone who can't see it, and that's fine. I'll reblog a link after I post this that I shared a while back that delves into this idea a bit more.

• Despite what some people say, you don't need to be using alt text to explain jokes. Not getting a joke isn't an accessibility issue. You can keep making in-jokes. There's nothing wrong with a joke only Those Who Get It Get It. But the point is equal access for disabled folks. A blind person should have the same opportunity to either get the joke or not as someone who can see it. If they don't get it, it should be because they don't get it, not because they can't see it.

• Something is better than nothing. Unless you're that one guy on fedi who is obsessed with saying that he can't do alt text because he has to write 40,000 words for every image and he is not joking and sincerely won't stop making them that long despite nobody wanting him to, then literally anything is better than "image". Photo of a cat? "Cat" is better alt text than "image". A painting you did of a cat? "Cat painting" is better than "image". "Dick pic" is better than "image". Any context is better than none. So if you feel alt text is too much of a burden, find a single word to put in. In no universe is this too big of an ask. The bar is so low. In a world where people rarely write alt text on most platforms you're ahead of the game if you even tried a little.

• Remember blind people actually exist. It's weird to have to say this but the fedi post I described earlier is exactly why I added this. Blind people exist, they're on the same Internet as you, just with a lot of websites that are unusable to them. Remember that. Imagine cohost except none of the images ever load for you (this has probably happened occasionally lmao but y'know). No matter what everyone but you sees the images. You can see the text, just no pictures. Think about how many posts would mean absolutely nothing to you at that point, you don't even get a crumb of context, everyone else is laughing their heads off at something but you don't get to find out what. This is what real life people you share websites with deal with constantly, everywhere. This isn't some weird leftist purity test, alt text is really for real needed by tons of real people.

That's it sorry I wrote so much but I think about this a lot so I vomited it all out here. Tldr: alt text isn't that hard, dinguses who don't know anything just told you it's hard, you do need to do alt text, and blind people are real not theoretical talking points