The Fulcrum ⚒️ ⛓️‍💥 🏴‍☠️1d ago
Rab Bruce’s Spider
Social media for the blind:
Bluesky, hardly any Alt Text. To understand an image, you must open the post, tap on the image and hope your screen reader can describe it, or spend a minute or so scanning it.
X, hardly any image descriptions. The built-in AI will try to describe the images which is a major improvement, but you need to wait until the screen reader finishes reading all the info about the post.
Mastodon, loads of image descriptions. What a pleasure it is to browse my timeline here.
Mar 15 at 8:07amWeb
Show threadJames Tweedie1d ago
@RabBrucesSpider1 Providing #AltText makes you think about the photos or images you're posting. And what the actual stand out features are. I try to avoid descriptions like "Tree on a hill" (I've seen quite a few like that 🤔)
Show threadMartinTaudio1d ago
@MyricaGale @RabBrucesSpider1 “photo of a bird” I’ve seen that a few times!
Show threadJessamyn1d ago
@MartinTaudio @MyricaGale @RabBrucesSpider1 Any time I am writing alt text (which is ANY time I include an image) I always ask myself "Am I describing this better than an AI would?" and if not, I start again.
Show threadDer böse Hexe Njähähä 🧙‍♀️🪄⚡️1d ago
@RabBrucesSpider1 That's very encouraging—together we'll keep on working to make it the norm. #altText
Show threadLizzie---22h ago
@RabBrucesSpider1 Welcome! I miss sometimes but try always to give descriptives.
Show threadAxomamma, Antifa from birth21h ago
@RabBrucesSpider1 AI alt text is bullshit.
Show threadRab Bruce’s Spider21h ago
@Axomamma Aye, but it copes adequately if the image contains text. It can usually read most of the text. For anything else, yes it’s crap.
Show threadFlash Mob Of One21h ago
@RabBrucesSpider1 And even cooler: It's humans writing them just to be nice people.
Show threadWillow "Wolveric" Catkin4m ago
@FlashMobOfOne @RabBrucesSpider1
A ""fun"" experience I have personally, is attaching a GIF with GBoard sometimes, which has automated alt-text by default, which sucks the majority of the time, and has no clue what it's looking it...  (I end up wishing it just didn't the majority of the time, because it's so bad, I typically have to go out of my way to delete it before writing my own by hand anyway...)
Show threadmilla🧷17h ago
@RabBrucesSpider1 I didn't even know about the existence of alt text before becoming active on Mastodon. Bluesky also has an option to "remind" you of a missing alt, I don't know why more people don't use it. It's such a handy feature, especially on micro blogging sites because I can add so much context into the alt if needed!
Show threadBunRab Is Old And Tired12h ago
@RabBrucesSpider1
People join Mastodon because the other people there are nice, and readily adopt the ethos, which includes alt text. One will get (polite) pointed comments if one forgets. On some servers, it's even a written rule, not just an unwritten one.
Show threadDer böse Hexe Njähähä 🧙‍♀️🪄⚡️8h ago

@AnyaKarl @blogangela @Macnutzer94 @RMa
Look, no matter how hard a few trolls may try to make a spectacle of themselves—that’s the reality. Of course, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep standing up to them. Apparently, though, many more people take it for granted, thereby helping to normalize it.

In fact, even more and more accounts that used to ignore the request or made a huge fuss about it now use alttext as a matter of course.
@RabBrucesSpider1