Wren, a feral mannequin (is taking a break!): A bit of an obvious disclaimer-- it is really difficult to write alt text for your own art! It sometimes feels to me like I'm boasting. That's imposter syndrome, to be frank. You are allowed to editorialize about how nice your art is, how good your technique was. Feel free to gas yourself up!

Here's my attempt at a guide to writing effective alt and descriptive text for art work on Bluesky. I'll be posting bits of it here as a thread as well for easy sharing. I'm also open to critique and suggestions, so feel free to comment or ask questions! 📌

An attempted guide to writing effective alt and descriptive text for art.mannequinrentals.help An attempted guide to writing effective alt and descriptive text for works of art on Bluesky.

Let's start with definitions! Alt text: brief & concise sentence (or sentence fragment) describing the most important context/contents of an image. Descriptive text: more detailed alt text that comprehensively describes an image. For the most part, folks on Bluesky use these terms interchangeably.

First things first: I am so grateful for the culture on Bluesky that lead to somewhat high adoption rates of writing alt text! Some users won't even interact with posts that do not have alt text/have not requested help from the volunteers of Alt4Me (who write alt text for anyone no questions asked).

Speaking of Alt4Me, if you come across an inaccessible post & need someone to provide alt, or if you cannot write or enter alt text for any reason, just type it in your post, reply, or in the alt text entry box itself! We'll come write it for you. Feel free to volunteer in the feed too if you can!

A bit of an obvious disclaimer-- it is really difficult to write alt text for your own art! It sometimes feels to me like I'm boasting. That's imposter syndrome, to be frank. You are allowed to editorialize about how nice your art is, how good your technique was. Feel free to gas yourself up!

You have a character limit of 1000 to work in. If you have time and someone to bounce it off of, I recommend sending your piece and your alt text draft to a friend or mentor and ask for feedback on the description. Let them gas you up too.

Also, save a text file of all your alt text for each piece! Or use a site like my.alt-text.org to save it, or save it in a private Discord server, or save it in the caption area of Google Photos or Google Drive... If you will likely post it again, save yourself the time and effort!

Alt Text Suitemy.alt-text.org Built For Building Image Descriptions

Pretend like you're describing the piece to a friend (or a gallery!) over the phone. What information do they need to hear to understand the image and the context (why you're posting it)? Alt text builds a bridge over that “perceptual black hole.” Descriptive text fills it.

The basics of what you should include are: - medium/media used - art style (if you know it, general idea is fine) - the focal point - important figures/shapes/objects and where they are in relation to each other - any words/numbers/symbols if present - emotions you're trying to evoke in the piece.

When you look at the image, try tracking where your eyes go. What draws you in first is likely the subject of the picture, what you should explain first and use as a reference point to where the rest of the things in the picture are and how they relate.

As your eyes move around the picture and you notice more, think about how those other things relate to the subject. Are they interacting with the subject in some way, is there something happening that should be expressed, how much of this actually relates to the subject of your post.

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