Mastodawn

Richard Lewis Feb 26

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Sun's finally been out, and so are the daffodils, everywhere!
#MEcfsEgress #BloomScrolling DailyNaturePics 249

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Richard Lewis Feb 26

@Irisfreundin Thanks for noticing. I was very tired and in a rush. They are all plain daffodils, per the body text, so I wasn't sure what value ALT would add for anyone..?

The whole point of these photots is visual enjoyment, no real information content. Do you think anyone is likely to benefit from added ALT in this kind of case? (For my future reference.)

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Richard Lewis

@Irisfreundin - thanks for the link. Friendly discussion:

So maybe I should have handed this off with #ALT4me? Interesting, on screen reader emoji & camel case interaction....

But I didn't spot a good "why", for this case. Unless one is looking to maximise reach, by (as you basically say) virtue signalling to *sighted* users.

Do you know (or are you) visually impaired? I feel I've posted more ALT than body text, across thousands of pics, this last year. But zero feedback on any of it...
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Richard Lewis Feb 27

@Irisfreundin ... I feel no one reads it; so it's only remarkable in it's absence.

Yet it takes me a non-negligable amount of my short energy. And I personally (with ADHD, perhaps) find the "ALT" lettering distracts from enjoying the images. A compromise.

Apparently I've been doing it wrong, too, by using AI for (too?) detailed visual descriptions (and species identification).

Would 3x "pretty flower(s)" ALT be directly appreciated by anyone at all?
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Jupiter Rowland Feb 28

@Richard Lewis You can really put a whole lot of effort into finding the optimal description for each one of your images. You can sit down and educate yourself by reading through dozens upon dozens of webpages and articles and blog posts about alt-texts and image descriptions. You can spend hours or days or more searching for and reading Mastodon posts, about alt-texts and image descriptions from a Mastodon point of view until you hope you're well-educated enough to know how to optimise your image descriptions for the Fediverse.

You can rack your brains about

what's important in your image in the context of your post and what isn't
who will or may be in the audience of your post
what they know about your post/your images and what they don't
what they may want to know about your post/your images, regardless of whether that's important in the context or not
whether they're willing to go find the missing information themselves
whether they could find the missing information themselves if they tried in the first place, or whether they'd have to depend on asking you
whether having to ask or search for missing information is okay in the culture of your audience, or whether you're required to supply all that information right away

and optimise each one of your image descriptions according to your findings. You don't want to throw anyone in front of a bus by neglect, now, do you? And you don't want to appear like a lazy bum, right?

You can educate yourself about many rules of describing images. Like, how to properly describe colours. Or to always put explanations into the post text body and never into the alt-text. Or when and why an additional image description in the post text body makes sense. You can abide by them all.

You can hone your skills and fine-tune your image descriptions at least to near-perfection. You can spend hours or days describing one image, composing and writing it completely by hand with absolutely zero AI support.

Nobody will honour it. It feels like nobody really appreciates your effort if nobody even likes/faves your image posts.

I've done all of the above. All the way to describing each image twice over. Not often because it takes me very long to describe one measly image. I haven't posted a single fully original image since mid-2024. But whenever I do, practically nobody cares.

Granted, it doesn't help that the two channels on which I post my images nowadays (if at all), @Jupiter Rowland's (streams) outlet and @Jupiter's Fedi-Memes on (streams), barely have any reach. And even if they had, most Mastodon users would be scared away by the summary/CW announcing a post that exceeds 500 characters by huge magnitudes. But my original image posts can't do without a long image description in the post text body, and even my meme posts can't do without an appropriate amount of explanations, so they have to be that long. And it feels like I've just wasted the hours or days that I've invested into researching for and writing image descriptions.

If anything at all, someone from the alt-text police will show up and attack you and call you ableist for not describing your images exactly by their personal standards. In fact, you can be called ableist by talking about image descriptions instead of just simply delivering perfect image descriptions right off the bat. By whichever definition of "perfect". But don't you dare deviate from it even only a smidge, for that'd be ableist.

Although, seriously, people getting together and talking about image descriptions and alt-texts and finding a consensus and common definitions for good alt-texts and image descriptions for the whole Fediverse is what we so direly need. But not even the alt-text police coordinate their image description quality standards, nor do they communicate them. You have to know them just like so.

What makes matters worse is that if your alt-text exceeds 512 characters, Misskey will discard it entirely, and accessibility activists on Misskey will think you're too lazy to write an alt-text. This may apply to the various Forkeys as well.

You can't possibly write perfect image descriptions for everyone. But you have to write perfect image descriptions for everyone because everyone demands you write perfect image descriptions for them personally. Or else!

CC: @Nervensäge 💐 @jeSuisatire neindochohh ᘛ⁐̤ᕐᐷ

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AltTextPolice #A11y #Accessibility #Ableist #Ableism #AbleismMeta #CWAbleismMeta

Jupiter Rowland - [email protected]

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David Mitchell

Mar 3

@fedimemes_on_streams @[email protected] @[email protected]

Huh. You all seem to have no trouble finding words for your apologetics…

Meanwhile for people scrolling down the corridor of your posts, the reality is that they are faced with an endless series of featureless blank locked doors that you can’t be bothered to label with even the most rudimentary of signs to indicate whether they conceal a broom closet, a carnival, or a greenhouse.

So in the end this isn’t a conversation about blind people, it’s a conversation about you: it reveals who you are, how you think, how you interact with others. And with every fresh long block of new words you produce, you show your capacity to write #AltText if you simply cared enough. So clearly the issue is that you’re quite ok with serving yourself and moving and acting and speaking in ways that exclude and marginalize the people standing right beside you.

🤷‍♂️

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Jupiter Rowland Mar 3

I've described all my images since I've learned about alt-texts, and I put more effort and knowledge into them than anyone on Mastodon; CW: long (almost 8,700 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, alt-text meta, image description meta, character limit meta Artikel ansehen Zusammenfassung ansehen

@David Mitchell :CApride: Now listen here.

Ever since I've learned about alt-texts and image descriptions, I've described all my images. And unlike most Mastodon users, I've improved my image-describing further and further.

Whenever I learned something new about image descriptions, be it a rule, a guideline, a good practice or a Mastodon preference, I used this new knowledge in new image descriptions and declared all my previous image descriptions obsolete. And I've learned a lot over the years.

I've learned from Mastodon that if explanations are necessary to understand an image, they must be delivered immediately with the image post. Ever since, I've explained everything in my images that needs explaining. And since all my image posts are about extremely obscure niche topics, they need a whole lot of explanations.

I've learned from a physically disabled Mastodon user that not everyone can access alt-texts. She, for example, can't. Thus, explanations in the alt-text are lost to her. I've learned from her that explanations go into the post text. I've put all my explanations into the post text ever since.

I've learned from Mastodon that Mastodon tends to love long, detailed image descriptions. Considering how obscure the contents of my original images are and how nobody knows what anything in them looks like if they don't see it, I came to the conclusion that someone somewhere out there might need full, detailed descriptions. I've given my original images full, detailed descriptions ever since.

I've learned from various sources that alt-text must only describe what's important within the context of a post. But judging from my observations of Mastodon, its culture and its love for long alt-texts override this rule. If someone wants to know about all the small details in your images, the context doesn't matter. Thus, how detailed my image descriptions are depends on whether or not I have to expect someone being curious about the details.

I've learned by experimentation that Mastodon truncates long external alt-texts from outside at the 1,500-character mark. Also, Hubzilla (where I am) can only display so many characters of alt-text, and alt-text cannot be scrolled. Since the audience of my alt-texts is pretty much exclusively on Mastodon, I've put the full, long, detailed image descriptions into the post text.

I've learned from a blog post that alt-texts must never contain line breaks. Line breaks in alt-texts have a nasty side-effect for screen reader users: After each line break, screen readers assume that they're reading a new alt-text for a new image. And they start whatever they consider an individual image alt-text with something like, "Graphic." Thus, I write all my alt-texts as one single paragraph.

I've learned from another blog post, as well as personal experience with various Fediverse server applications, that alt-texts must never contain the double quotes commonly found on keyboards. Different frontends may misbehave in different ways, some fail very ungracefully. Thus, I no longer use these quotes in my alt-texts.

I've learned from Mastodon that even if there is an image description in the post text, there must always be an accurate and sufficiently detailed image description in the alt-text regardless. Otherwise you risk being sanctioned. I have described all my original images twice ever since: with a long and fully detailed description in the post text and a shorter description in the alt-text.

I've learned from blog posts and websites about alt-texts that text in images must be transcribed verbatim. However, nowhere that I've seen this rule written down, I've seen it mention text that's unreadable in the image while the author knows what's written there. My conclusion is that there is no exception for these texts. I tend to have many such texts. Thus, I transcribe all bits and pieces of text within the borders of my images if I have a way to read them. And I usually have.

I've learned from other blog posts about alt-texts that colours must not only be mentioned in image descriptions, but they must also be described. After all, blind people cannot be expected to know what e.g. Burgundy red is. Also, dimensions must be given not simply in absolute measures, but relatively to what else is in the image or to something that everyone is familiar with, namely the human body. Unfortunately, I've learned that so recently that I only have one original image post in which I make use of these techniques; hence, all my older original image posts count as obsolete.

I've learned from yet elsewhere that races must not be mentioned, and genders must not be assumed. I abide by both when describing meme images. My original images, on the other hand, never contain actual human beings. Whenever I show an avatar, it's always one of my avatars whose gender I have personally defined, and these avatars can't really emulate real-life human phenotypes.

Most of the above has never been taken into consideration by anyone on Mastodon. I'm literally the only one in the Fediverse who takes describing images to such levels.

But I go beyond alt-texts and image descriptions.

I've learned from Mastodon that if there's something, anything in a post of yours that might disturb anyone in some way, the post requires a Mastodon-style content warning that mentions in which way the post is disturbing. Here on Hubzilla, that's a summary. It's the same thing, and Hubzilla had summaries before Mastodon had CWs.

From observing both Mastodon and the Web outside the Fediverse, I've compiled a list of potentially triggering topics. Even excluding national/state/provincial/regional politics, I've gathered 111 of these so far. I do my best to include each one whenever necessary. On top of that, I add CWs for many things I post about because I guess I go onto people's nerves when I post about them (the Fediverse, alt-text, image descriptions, hashtags, character limits, quote-posts, actual quote-posting etc.).

However, Hubzilla is not a Twitter wannabe. It's more like Facebook or blogging software. It only offers a summary (Mastodon: CW) field for posts and DMs, but not for comments (it has two different editors for when you reply and when you don't). I could try to add a summary (Mastodon: CW) using a pair of BBcode tags, and I've done so here, but I know from personal experience that the summary tags do not translate to a Mastodon CW in comments. I'd add an individual CW to each one of my comments, but Mastodon users will neither get an actual CW nor understand that I've tried.

So I double almost all my CW'd topics up with an appropriate set of hashtags. This is in line with the culture where I am: Here on Hubzilla and in its whole software family, we don't force poster-side CWs upon each other. Instead, we have them automatically generated for ourselves, reader-side, tailored to our individual needs. But this requires keywords to trigger the automated hiding of content behind CWs.

Also, I know just what may disturb people. The best example is eye contact. You think that eye contact can only be triggering in full-face portraits of a person looking directly at the viewer? Wrong! It's triggering if there's at least one eye in the image. I've been told that some people in the autistic spectrum can detect an eye in an image if it's only a tiny fraction of a pixel. I have to expect this to extend to other potentially triggering things as well.

Thus, if it's potentially triggering and somewhere within the borders of one of my images, even if it's hardly discernible or completely invisible to the neurotypical, I still consider the whole image potentially triggering, and I treat the image and the whole post as such.

In fact, I've stopped posting potentially triggering images here on Hubzilla altogether. That's because Hubzilla has no way of making Mastodon blank an image out. And not long ago, Mastodon's CWs only hid the post text, but not the images belonging to a post. I can't rule out that certain Mastodon apps still behave this way. So I can't even use CWs to hide a triggering image. This is why I only ever post images on (streams) now: (streams) makes Mastodon blank images out when a post contains one or two certain hashtags.

Again, nobody on Mastodon goes even only nearly that far.

Please tell me in which ways exactly this is still insufficient.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta

Netzgemeinde/Hubzilla

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Jupiter Rowland Mar 3

Your own posts aren't any better anyway; CW: long (over 1,300 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, alt-text meta, image description meta, character limit meta, hashtag meta View article View summary

@David Mitchell :CApride: On the other hand, when I look at your personal timeline, it's obvious that you've never really arrived on Mastodon. You break all kinds of rules. You break alt-text and image-describing rules, and you break Mastodon's cultural rules.

You write alt-texts in multiple paragraphs. You almost never use CWs, not for posts over 500 characters, not for US or Canadian politics, not for wars, never. You rarely use hashtags, and when you do, you sometimes put them in-line instead of all into the bottom line. In-line hashtags are inconvenient for screen reader users.

You boost image posts without checking whether the images have alt-texts, much less whether the alt-texts are accurate, sufficiently detailed and in line with the existing alt-text and image description rules. You boost posts about potentially disturbing topics that have no CWs.

So don't come lecturing me if your own doings are likely to get you silently muted and blocked by other Mastodon users left and right.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #MastodonCulture

Netzgemeinde/Hubzilla

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Jupiter Rowland Mar 3

Quote-post of an actual image post of mine, complete with image alt-text and a long image description in the post itself; CW: long (over 64,000 characters), quote-post, alt-text meta, image description meta, AI mentioned Artikel ansehen Zusammenfassung ansehen

@David Mitchell :CApride: If you really believe I never describe any of my images, here's a counter-proof: my last post with an actual image here on this Hubzilla channel before I moved my image-posting to (streams). It's from May 16th, 2024. By the way, the image should be embedded within the post, right above the "Image description" headline.

The image has an alt-text of exactly 1,500 characters with as detailed an image description as I could possibly fit into it, and in addition, it has a long image description in the post text itself that measures over 60,000 characters. It has to be the longest description for a single image in the history of the Fediverse. It took me two whole days, morning to evening, to research for and write this image description, and I wrote the alt-text in the morning of the following day. All without using any AI.

Fair warning: The image description is outdated in the ways that dimensions and colours are described, and parts of the explanations may be factually wrong. Besides, I didn't try hard enough to either avoid or explain technical and jargon terms. But I didn't know better back then, and I don't go around and edit all my image descriptions whenever I learn something new.

I could quote-post more image posts with alt-texts and either explanations or full descriptions in the post if this one post doesn't convince you. But this is just about my only image post that has nothing potentially triggering in the image. All the others have potentially triggering eye contact which would end up on older Mastodon versions and probably in many Mastodon apps in plain sight.

RE: https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/f8ac991d-b64b-4290-be69-28feb51ba2a7

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

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Jupiter Rowland Mar 3

The alt-text for the above image post; CW: long (over 1,700 characters) View article View summary

@David Mitchell :CApride: If, for reasons that are beyond my control, the image in the post above should not have an alt-text, here is the actual alt-text from the original.

Digital shaded rendering of the main building of the Universal Campus, a downloadable island location for 3-D virtual worlds based on OpenSimulator. The camera position is about three metres or ten feet above the ground. The camera is tilted slightly upward and rotated slightly to the left from the building's longitudinal axis. The futuristic building is over 200 metres long, stretching far into the distance, and its front is about 50 metres wide. Its structure is mostly textured to resemble brushed stainless steel, and almost everything in-between is grey tinted glass. The main entrance of the building in the middle of the front has two pairs of glass doors. They are surrounded by a massive complex geometrical structure, very roughly reminiscent of a vintage video game spacecraft with the front facing upward. Four huge cylindrical pillars carry the roof end, the outer two of which extend beyond it. All are tilted away from the landing area in front of the building and at the same time outward to the sides. The sides of the building are slightly tilted themselves. In the distance, a large geodesic dome rises from the building. There is a large circular area in front of the main entrance as well as several wide paths. They have light concrete textures, and they are lined with low walls with almost white concrete textures. Furthermore, various shrubs and trees decorate the scenery. A more detailed description including explanations and text transcripts can be found in the post.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #ImageDescription

Netzgemeinde/Hubzilla

Huh… wow. That’s a lot of words.

I think my comment was mostly directed at @ZeroGravitas, but umm… if you really want to wear the shoe, then ok, you do you Jupiter.

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Richard Lewis Mar 4

@jupiter_rowland - It seems like you've been through quite the ALT text odyssey!

Some interesting info-nuggets in there. Too much for my (dyslexic) slow reading to finish all of your replies...

But seems like a bit of a Gödelian incompleteness situation. Or, at least, "you can't please everyone, any of the time".

Did you speak much with people who use screen readers, along the way? (In brief 🙏 ). That was my main curiosity; to get more directly grounded perspective.

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Jupiter Rowland Mar 4

@Richard Lewis That's the trouble: The only way to actually speak with screen reader users is to find them, single them out and mention them personally. And even then they will have to want to discuss these matters with you.

This is also because next to everyone in the Fediverse who isn't sighted is on Mastodon and only on Mastodon. And Mastodon has no support for groups whatsoever. Discussing things would be much easier if Mastodon had had full-blown group support, either simply compatible with existing Fediverse group solutions or with its own solution that's fully compatible with what else supports groups, already before Musk announced he'd take over Twitter. Then Mastodon's culture would include groups rather than being completely oblivious of groups.

What I know, though, is that blind and visually-impaired Mastodon users are happy to have some alt-texts. On the commercial social platforms, they got nothing. So they generally don't have sky-high demands. In fact, unless it's a matter of life and death, they don't really care how accurate a description is because they can't verify the accuracy anyway. Also, some like a bit of whimsy with their alt-texts.

But I'm rather safe than sorry. Besides, it isn't the blind or visually-impaired people who police alt-texts and image descriptions. Mastodon's alt-text police are fully sighted. And it's them who sanction you and who decide whether you're allowed to have any reach in the Fediverse, based on how you describe your images.

However, due to Mastodon's limitations, the alt-text police don't talk to each other either, nor do they ever talk to anyone who isn't sighted. So everyone enforces different quality standards while believing their standards are the official gold standards.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AltTextPolice

Netzgemeinde/Hubzilla

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Richard Lewis Mar 4

@jupiter_rowland Thanks. That was indeed the impression I got.

Tbh. I'm utterly out of my depth, in the Fediverse; I'm still primarily on Twitter (and one foot onto Bsky) because that's where my chronic illness community is. Cross-posting here, too, with Buffer.

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jeSuisatire neindochohh ᘛ⁐̤ᕐᐷ Feb 27

@ZeroGravitas
> Friendly discussion:

.. that's a good one ..

@Irisfreundin

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jeSuisatire neindochohh ᘛ⁐̤ᕐᐷ Feb 27

> Pictures without alt text signal neglect of blind and visually impaired people.

Actually that's way to many words, as well as the worries by @ZeroGravitas on the amount or complexity of a description.
(in my humble opinion)

Two three words (at least) are already enough to fulfill the needs of knowing about what is happening (at all).

Something like:
* A daffodil
* A few more daffodil's
* A lot more daffodil's
.. is already miles away from
"A jpg image".

Also, I stopped creating #ALTtext for other's and started writing them for me, my pleasure, my entertainment.

Since than I've had so much fun, and learned so much about looking at images and videos, that I'll be grateful for the rest of my life for ALTtext to simply exist.

@svenja
@Irisfreundin

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Broadfork Mar 3

@ZeroGravitas You didn’t spot a good “why”? in the link that explained how to make the fediverse accessible for deaf, blind and blinddeaf users?

Then call alt text use virtue signalling to sighted users?

Blocked.

@Irisfreundin