👩🦯The Blind FraggleI'm seeing an increasing number of picture posts here with no alt text, and this worries me. Please check before you post, and keep your posts accessible to everyone!
Dave (He/Him/His)@Fragglemuppet I think some Mastodon newbees don't realize the importance of picture descriptions. It's like there's a Twitter tradition of not doing descriptions. The site should nag before accepting a post, much like Twitter will, only if you choose to drill down some menu levels and check a box.
@wx1g That's what I was thinking, bad habits from Twitter, lol. That's why we need to tamp down on it early. I mean, it is easier here, too.
VegOS ♋ 📷@Fragglemuppet @wx1g In the very beginning, Twitter was quite good without pics. Later I observed the same with *diaspora.
@wx1g As for Twitter making it better in the future, I have no faith. It kinda looked like maybe they were headed in that direction before Musk took over.
@Fragglemuppet I think your skepticism is prudent.
@wx1g Hmmm, I've never been called prudent before. I like it! lol
@Fragglemuppet Don't get used to it! MUAHAHAHA!!!
eviloatmeal, resident Death Stranding 2 apologist (arch, btw)@wx1g @Fragglemuppet Yes. For the longest time, image descriptions were simply not a feature on Twitter. I can't recall if it had been implemented already before I left, but I hear that they have it, now.
@eviloatmeal Yes, but most people just don't bother using it.
@Fragglemuppet Right, right. My thought was that for the longest time, image descriptions weren't a thing, so people are used to it not being a thing, and it's going to take a while to un-learn not having learned it... Uh... Yeah. That.
@eviloatmeal But it has been a thing for a while now. I know it's ridiculous, being 2022, but my thinking is that many people still don't know that blind people exist and actually use the internet and everything.
@eviloatmeal Yes, maybe I'm being too harsh, though in all honesty I'm holding back lest I be banned from all social media forever, lol.
@Fragglemuppet Oh, I'm not making any excuses for them, I just know that image descriptions didn't exist over there when I was there, so it's not surprising that not everyone immediately went "ah, yes, I should make sure to write image descriptions" from the get-go.
@eviloatmeal When was that?
@Fragglemuppet I used Twitter from April 2010 to June 2020, then I moved to the fediverse because I couldn't get Twitter to function the way I wanted any more.
@eviloatmeal Okay, it was definitely a thing by 2020, but I don't actually remember when it started. Probably when you were on your way out. I don't know about you or most people, but for me separating myself from a social media site takes a long time. With Facebook, I said I was gonna do it for years before I actually did.
@Fragglemuppet For me it was a case of several months of Twitter (which I used exclusively through the web interface on twitter.com itself) slowly becoming increasingly difficult to use.
First I would occasionally notice that the setting to have posts appear in chronological order had mysteriously toggled itself off, and I wasn't seeing the tweets I was looking for at the top of the timeline. Then it would start to happen more frequently. Eventually it got to the point where I would wake up, log into Twitter, the timeline was non-chronological even though I had toggled the chronological setting to on, and I would have to refresh the page to try to make it take effect. Some days I would open Twitter and refresh 10, 20, 30 times before the timeline looked like it had the tweets in order.
At the same time as this, I would also notice that sometimes tweets from certain people would just not appear in my feed at all.
Then Twitter would start hitting me with a modal dialog telling me that my browser was outdated, and recommending me to switch to Microsoft Edge or something like that, which was both wrong (I was using the latest Firefox) and highly insulting.
Around this time is also when they started injecting random notifications into the timeline. So I would see messages to the tune of "person X liked this tweet by person Y" followed by the body of the tweet from person Y, and I would have no idea who person Y was, and sometimes I would very much not want to see the things that person Y was tweeting. But I couldn't find any way to remedy this.
So that was when it got to a tipping point for me, and between not being able to see tweets from the people I was trying to talk to, and seeing lots of tweets from people I did not want to see tweets from, Twitter was simply unusable for me, and in the span of about a day and a half I decided that I would simply have to leave and make do with something else.
At least here on the fediverse I know that no matter what problems I encounter, it won't be those specific ones. Because if nothing else, I can choose what software I run on my instance, and what client I use to access it.
First I would occasionally notice that the setting to have posts appear in chronological order had mysteriously toggled itself off, and I wasn't seeing the tweets I was looking for at the top of the timeline. Then it would start to happen more frequently. Eventually it got to the point where I would wake up, log into Twitter, the timeline was non-chronological even though I had toggled the chronological setting to on, and I would have to refresh the page to try to make it take effect. Some days I would open Twitter and refresh 10, 20, 30 times before the timeline looked like it had the tweets in order.
At the same time as this, I would also notice that sometimes tweets from certain people would just not appear in my feed at all.
Then Twitter would start hitting me with a modal dialog telling me that my browser was outdated, and recommending me to switch to Microsoft Edge or something like that, which was both wrong (I was using the latest Firefox) and highly insulting.
Around this time is also when they started injecting random notifications into the timeline. So I would see messages to the tune of "person X liked this tweet by person Y" followed by the body of the tweet from person Y, and I would have no idea who person Y was, and sometimes I would very much not want to see the things that person Y was tweeting. But I couldn't find any way to remedy this.
So that was when it got to a tipping point for me, and between not being able to see tweets from the people I was trying to talk to, and seeing lots of tweets from people I did not want to see tweets from, Twitter was simply unusable for me, and in the span of about a day and a half I decided that I would simply have to leave and make do with something else.
At least here on the fediverse I know that no matter what problems I encounter, it won't be those specific ones. Because if nothing else, I can choose what software I run on my instance, and what client I use to access it.
@eviloatmeal Anyway, I'm more angry at the people I and maybe 1 or 2 other people would give constant reminders to, and they still wouldn't bother. That, and I'd ask other people to spread the word, and most of the time they wouldn't. That's why here is so much better!
@Fragglemuppet Dang. That sucks. It's hard to cut people out of your circles based on a certain thing that feels like a dealbreaker but isn't related to the relationship, I guess.
@eviloatmeal @Fragglemuppet I think Twitter has had image descriptions for about a year. Facebook uses AI to generate descriptions.
@wx1g A year? Is that really it? Wow.
@Fragglemuppet Maybe it was longer. I honestly don't remember when it was first available. It got a quiet roll-out at first.
@wx1g @Fragglemuppet I see. I'm in the (unfortunate?) position of being from a generation and a social sphere where Facebook has, has always had, and will until the day it disappears have the label in my head of "the nursing home of social media", where we send people too old to overcome their computer illiteracy.
I guess that's a bit uncalled-for, sorry.
I guess that's a bit uncalled-for, sorry.
@eviloatmeal @Fragglemuppet I'm an old fart who should be on Facebook, but I know too much; LOL! My brother says he doesn't understand Twitter or know anyone, but me, who uses it. Mastodon would break him, even though clients, like Metatext, make it pretty easy.
@wx1g @Fragglemuppet My theory has always been that any communication medium ("social" or otherwise) is only as good as its ability to let you talk to who you intended to talk to.
That's why leaving Twitter was such a lightswitch for me - my reason for being on Twitter and my only reason for not leaving was that the people I wanted to talk to on Twitter were on Twitter. Once it became near-impossible to talk to them from day to day, I had no reason to stay.
It's also why I wouldn't try to convince anyone to leave Facebook - people on Facebook are there to talk to the kind of people who use Facebook. Who am I to interfere in that? Sure, there's a vast swathe of social spheres in meatspace that I'm effectively excommunicated from, because the knitting circle or book club only announces their schedule in a closed group on a proprietary platform. But morbid as it sounds, that's a problem which will solve itself over time. And a wealth of knowledge will be lost to that time with them, and that's pretty scary, but we all have to pick our battles, and that's not the hill I choose to die on.
That's why leaving Twitter was such a lightswitch for me - my reason for being on Twitter and my only reason for not leaving was that the people I wanted to talk to on Twitter were on Twitter. Once it became near-impossible to talk to them from day to day, I had no reason to stay.
It's also why I wouldn't try to convince anyone to leave Facebook - people on Facebook are there to talk to the kind of people who use Facebook. Who am I to interfere in that? Sure, there's a vast swathe of social spheres in meatspace that I'm effectively excommunicated from, because the knitting circle or book club only announces their schedule in a closed group on a proprietary platform. But morbid as it sounds, that's a problem which will solve itself over time. And a wealth of knowledge will be lost to that time with them, and that's pretty scary, but we all have to pick our battles, and that's not the hill I choose to die on.
crentagon
Ysera the Fae-Touched@Fragglemuppet Trying my best! I manage to get about 50% of mine, and I appreciate that Mastodon makes it a lot more apparent that it’s a thing to do.
Martin Trokenheim@Fragglemuppet I agree! Im one if the guilty ones, but I'm learning and try to do better. It's a new behavior so have patience, but it's good that you remind us about it 🙏
Personally I come from years on Instagram and I've never seen any discussion about accessability there, unfortunately.
Flaming June@Fragglemuppet Are you planning on adding an avi and banner photo to your account?
Cheshirecats17@Fragglemuppet I'm a newbie and don't understand about alt text.
I'll do some research and hopefully improve
I'll do some research and hopefully improve
Fran Rosevere@Fragglemuppet I add alt text to my pictures, but can't see it after I have posted it. I'll keep trying though!
Michael Jecks Author@Fragglemuppet As a new recruit to the platform, I have no idea what alt-text is! I'll have a look to find out before posting my own efforts. Thanks.
Wendytagg@Fragglemuppet Thank you for the reminder. New here but it is very easy to add descriptions.