As the parent of a blind young adult, I've gotten in the habit of adding ALT text to images. I recommend it, not only for reasons of access, but because it's a way of mindfully *seeing* what you post, and it adds layers of meaning...
[note: you may need to click a second time to display all of it]
OK so people are waffling on alt text again. I'm an artist and also I am blind. So, I'm going to talk about this.
The TL;DR is if you don't alt text, your post dies with me. I will never re-anything it, unless I alt text it myself. Some have said I can, and that's cool.
I once wrote text descriptions of a few pages of Understanding Comics for a student's academic accommodations. One of those "the professor scanned in a few pages for the course pack" type situations. It was a fun exercise!
Cool!
Reminds me of the time I came across a text-only "cliff notes" version of UC and could only think how (unless the reader *was* low vision) it was probably harder to read than the original! ^__^
I like that both Twitter and Bluesky have a function to remind me to add ALT text. If there's something that can be forgotten I will forget it. This way I've not missed a post since I toggled this on.
The rhodie garden! I keep meaning to go every spring, and life interferes.
A fun aside: I'm married to a Reedie, and UC played a small but significant part in @noahbrand.bsky.social deciding I was long-term partner material. (He tells the story better than I do, though.)
Short version: Early on, I lent her UNDERSTANDING COMICS, and she read it AND returned it. Afterward, we were able to converse about it like educated people.
A couple years later, I told her "Yeah, I didn't say anything about it at the time, but that was a test and you passed."
(Years later, I learned Noah had lost two prior copies of UC by lending them to then-girlfriends who neither read nor returned them.)
And now, years later, we live in a little PDX condo crammed full of delightful, often weird books.
I try to add alt-text to my images but the app crashes 80% of the time I do it and then I either have to futz around for 5 minutes to find a workaround or give up on the post altogether.
It's super frustrating, especially if I have to retype a lot of text. About half the time it glitches out I just abandon the post. The alternative is to occasionally be descriptive enough in the post itself. Life is full of compromises.
I try to add alt text when I can, but it's difficult when I post multi panel comic strips. Putting a description of each panel as well as the dialogue is hard when there is an alt text character limit. And you have to have both or you won't understand the comic.
You don't have to limit yourself to posting one copy of the strip. You could theoretically use up to four copies of the same strip in a single post to give yourself more room for completeness in your description. 🤷🏾♂️
And, while it's nice to have the alt text feature on the image, many people also include alt text in a thread below the image just to accommodate different readers and software; and, for comics, just the most important information to understand the story needs to be conveyed, not every detail~
There are some types of images that the visually impaired can absolutely understand part of the experience with alt text. There's other visual art that is entirely based on what it looks like, not the component composition. In the latter case alt text is largely just helping AI scrape it.
I can’t see that entire alt text - there’s no way to scroll so the top is cut off. It’s possible it’s because I have my phone text set larger - making alt text less accessible because of another accessibility tool. Is this a known issue? @pfrazee.com
I genuinely had fun alt-texting for this post, and it kinda makes me want to do more art and comic image QRTs to have the chance (and extra room) to gush about the works 😄~
Did you know you could read #comics w/ fun-shaped, diverse, & inclusive casts that also just happen to be bada**es from @valentinebarker.com AND commission art from him? Need a new avatar or dynamic print to put on your wall? Now's the time~
I set up the setting that doesn't let me post unless I add alt text to my images. I try my best with them but sometimes I'm not sure if I put a good enough description in.
