I'm seeing a lot of proclamations that there should be no exceptions to describing your images or that there's no reason to interact with any that aren't described.
I know these mean well, but they are themselves ableist.
Disabled people know that access needs can clash. I benefit from described images, but I know some people struggle to write them because of their own disabilities.
And that's okay! The culture of image descriptions is great here but it should never be absolutist.
I challenged someone on their hardline stance on this once, and it blew up into a tiny fedi drama, with the nice outcome of more social solutions.
That's around the time people started to CW undescribed images.
My instance developed an emoji 
to indicate you'd like a media description added.
There's a group you can tag, @imagecaptionspls, that people follow who are willing to add descriptions.
And there's @PleaseCaption to remind you if you forget.
Please describe:
* your jokes/memes - it's no good saying "this is just silly, you're not missing anything"; let us be the judge of that! Also, being disabled isn't about being dull and worthy all the time.
* your artwork - I'm so sad when I see cool art I can't boost (and sometimes can't even discern :) )
* your gifs and videos - description isn't just for still images!
* your audio clips - yep, these can be described too!
about “describing your images”:
In the ActivityPub forum, there is also a thread about writing a formal Fediverse Enhancement Proposal.
This goes then to all the implementors, developers, writers of ActivityPub software.
weex started it there and said:
“When media such as images and video are uploaded and shared without captions, it excludes the visually impaired from knowing what the content is.
To address this, some user interfaces highlight such media so that people can be more easily made aware of this deficiency in what they may share. People can then reply to ask for a captioned repost, or decide whether they want to share or otherwise engage with such content.”
I have added this thread there too, the Link is https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/would-media-captioning-make-a-good-fep/2319
/ @aral
When media such as images and video are uploaded and shared without captions, it excludes the visually impaired from knowing what the content is. To address this, some user interfaces highlight such media so that people can be more easily made aware of this deficiency in what they may share. People can then reply to ask for a captioned repost, or decide whether they want to share or otherwise engage with such content. The question is, would formalization of captioning make sense as a FEP? This...
apparently the descriptions on the official mobile apps only work with a screenreader (they don't show on the app!). They are however showing on other apps or desktop/laptop...
@blueplanetslittlehelper it's best practice to add the text in an image to the description.
And yes anything more than a couple emojis is unfriendly to screenreaders. The best thing to do here on the fediverse is put emoji-heavy posts behind a CW.
@bright_helpings .hg writing the description is a good thing to do instead of telling the poster that they should have
if they can, then it's a reminder that they should, and if they can't, then you're just helping them out. and, importantly, /you/ are not the one deciding for them whether they can.
@bright_helpings I have a question, that I've struggled with. I post stream archives of video gameplay on YouTube, and I kind of assume... people who are blind wouldn't really get much out of my videos, since they'd only hear me talking with no gameplay context.
So when I post about new videos here, with a thumbnail image of the video, I usually don't put any major details in the description; if I did thoroughly describe every one, twice a week, it would be a lot of extra work for no real benefit.
But I'm not trying to be ablelist or say like "I don't want blind people to listen to my videos", it's just... I assume they wouldn't want to?
Am I being weird about it or is this probably not a big deal; I do describe any other images that are just about regular posts/memes/jokes etc. Just never bother with the thumbnails.
Since I first wrote this, a good cultural norm that has found its way to fedi is the hashtags Alt4Me (where you can ask for an image description) and Alt4You (where you can add one to a toot that lacks it).
Also, most instances have edit functionality now, which makes it really easy to add the image description back into your toot if someone adds one for you!
@niki Oh is that not a mainline thing? Heck. My instance uses Hometown and I can't keep track of what is a feature of what.
Back before editing image descriptions was possible, though, the received wisdom seemed to be that if you removed and then re-uploaded the photo, you could add the description then. That still doesn't seem overly difficult, as general advice goes.
@bright_helpings @niki Caption editing is on mainline since Feb 2023.
@lucik https://botsin.space/@PleaseCaption/100675546885685663 says
"🔔 To get started:
1. Follow me and I'll start to follow you back
2. Every time you forget to add a text description to an image I will send you a reminder.
Don't want reminders anymore? Unfollow me!"
To get started: 1. Follow this bot and it'll start to follow you back. 2. If you have "Request follow requests" enabled you need to accept the bot's follow request. 3. If your posts or boosts have missing text descriptions you will get a reminder.
@bright_helpings @[email protected] sure, you are free to add it and if you want to credit me that would be rad! but also generally people nab emojos and credit is not expected. they are made to be shared!
And you don't need to be B/VI to use the Alt4Me hashtag! and it can be used to request descriptions for your own images!
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