@Cynni absolutely. There is no set in stone set of guidelines for alt text. The important thing is really just to try. One technique is just to imagine you're describing something to a friend over the phone. What parts of the image are most important? What do you love about it? What is eye catching? You don't have to describe every single detail.

Definitely always include any text in the image though. Otherwise, you can use the questions above to get the important bits in there. Don't stress about it too much. The more you do it and the more alt text you see, the easier it gets to pull the important bits from an image.

@prodygy of course! I think a lot of people have this same worry! You can use colors to describe images, along with words like warm, cool, vibrant, muted, soft, etc.

When it comes to abstract art, you can also describe the vibe of the art as you see it. This is especially true if it's your own art imo.

The important thing to know here is that most people who are blind and visually impaired either have some remaining vision or have a memory or general idea of colors and shapes. The percentage of people with absolutely no vision is very small.

Don't stress about it. Using color words and descriptive words won't offend the blind and visually impaired community. We all still use normal language terms like see and watch even if we're listening to visual media. I hope that's helpful!

@Moocher that does sound helpful. I haven't used the bot myself.

I will say, how your image descriptions show up later depends on the app you use. They don't show up at all on the standard Mastodon app.