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Elden Thing | Back & Body Hurts Platinugggggh Rewards Member


Profile pic and banner credits: sharkaeopteryx art by @superkiak! eggbug by eggbug! Mash-up by me!
[Alt-text for pfp: a cute sharkaeopteryx sat on the ground with legs out, wings down, jaw ajar, and hed empty, looking at eggbug and eggbug's enigmatic smile.]
[Alt-text for banner: a Spirit Halloween banner with eggbug and the sharkaeopteryx that Superkiak drew for me looking at it with inscrutable expressions]


I'm a Vietnamese cis woman born and currently living in the U.S. You may know me from Sandwich, from Twitter or Mastodon (same username), or on Twitch as Sharkaeopteryx. I do not have a Discord or Bluesky account.

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neckspike
@neckspike

One thing I like on the fedi that I think would be great here is that many people make an effort to add alt text to their images. You don't have to be 100% perfect all the time, but trying to make a habit of it makes our communities a little bit more inclusive of people with sight loss or no sight.

Doesn't need to be an exhaustive description (it's often better if it's not), just a sentence or two getting across the gist of what sighted people take in at a glance. I think of it as trying to share a meme with someone who can't see my phone, if it takes too long to explain it's not any fun. Obviously some things should be longer, like images of text you would transcribe the text or describing a complicated chart or graph, but you try to be concise because for screen reader users the whole thing is read out to them.

Knock on effects: sometimes if you don't get the joke the alt text makes it click, and alt text is machine translatable and it's fun to see how people describe their cats even if their posts are in french (or whatever language you don't speak if you do speak french).

tangential gripe about metadata

(I totally think it's bullshit there's no standard for embedding alt text in the image metadata, like EXIF stuff. It would be so convenient to describe your images once and have that data follow the file until it's changed or stripped off, especially for artists.)


neckspike
@neckspike

The point I mean to make is: don't let perfection be the enemy of trying. I've slowly made it a habit to describe my images and probably do it 90% of the time.



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in reply to @neckspike's post:

I've talked to folks about the metadata thing before, one problem is it opens alt text up to malicious actors and people who get used to alt text coming with the image wouldn't look. Suddenly you have blind folks hearing an onslaught of slurs from a meme someone posted and the person posting it doesn't even realize.

The other problem is alt text is context dependent. I've said this before as an example: if I post a picture of my dog on my couch to show my dog off I will write about the dog and not the couch. But if I later want to talk about my couch and that's the only photo I can find I have of the couch, then my alt text will be about the couch and may only briefly mention the dog being there.

That's definitely true but I think could be largely mitigated if the embedded alt text is displayed prominently in the UI when uploading a file, which I think is the most convenient way to design towards it being a normal part of uploading anyway. Someone's who not being an asshole on purpose would see the vandalized alt text and go 'wtf' and change it. Likewise the dog/couch photo, you could easily edit on the fly for purpose.

Like if it was standardized you'd see the beginning of the text in your file browser (depending on view) with the other data about the file and be able to edit it with right click properties or the mac equivalent (I don't know how macs work i'm a win/linux creechur). And ideally again on upload, so seeing that text would be very normal.