Monday morning reminder that using alt text is being accessible and access is a practice of love. If it’s hard to remember you can change your accessibility settings to make it so you can’t skeet without alt text. We were close to 25% of skeets with pictures had alt a while back. Let’s keep it up.
Also, if we ever end up hashtag heavy on this platform, it’s so much easier for screen readers to read them when each word in the hashtag is capitalized (#AccessIsLove)
It makes me fume when platforms automatically change hashtags to all lowercase when I have purposely typed it out using appropriate caps. I’ve no idea why that’s the default. It’s like removing all punctuation from a paragraph.
Agreed.
The site still doesn’t work properly using large text, accessibility seems a low priority for them. Hopefully version 2, due soon, will address these things.
Alt text isn’t just for screen readers. Some of them can pick it up depending on the device. And it should be there for when the website does allow it because currently there’s no way to go back and add it.
Those are valid points!
I know I've had a couple instances were pics wouldn't load but alt text would - so I made use of it there. But that doesn't seem the primary purpose either, so I figured I'd ask.
Thanks!
Not sure about all screenreaders, but certainly not the phone based ones.
Alt text is still useful for people like me, legally blind but able to read large text in a phone held close. I use the combination of image and text. But yes, it’s not ideal, I think blind users aren’t using this site much.
Oh shit I didn’t realize there was a toggle to require alt text. Thank you for mentioning this- my squirrly brain just forgets and this will help a lot!
Honestly, the shift to always including alt text was such a positive step. Its accessible. It’s kind. And it makes for wholly better posts. Allowing for extra detail and clarity without clutter. Thanks for the advocacy and understanding (for those of us that forgot a few times along the way).
alt text is love. love is the force that creates union.
do as thou wilt.
by mastering your own will, you focus it, applying it to the world around you, and bring it under your conscious control.
love under will.
Nice, enabled the setting now. I usually write alt text the few times I post images. But it can be hard to remember in the moment so it is good Bsky.app provides us with the option to force ourselves to use it. 😊
if you are posting a photo with text from iphone, in the photos app you can select the text and copy paste it into the alt.
when posting tweets I usually clean the text up a bit to remove extraneous info, like number of likes etc so that it can be read clearly
i’ve been having a lot of fun with this tbh. it’s really challenging trying to think of suitable familiar objects i can reference to describe weirdass transparent deep sea shit. flexing language muscles i haven’t used in a really long time.
Also: if for whatever reason anyone needs help with adding alt text to an image they can just put “ALT4Me” someplace in the post and it’ll be dumped into a feed where human volunteers will add it as a reply.
#nofeed
damn didn't know that was an option, thanks! My nascent ADHD tendencies were brought to the fore after covid took a wrecking ball to my brain so it is honestly literally impossible for me to remember as I only recently started doing it
