Post #10260

2025-11-20 11:08 UTC

@akamran@indieweb.social @altbot@fuzzies.wtf @Jyoti@mas.to be me, be visually impaired, notice comic boosted by mutual, start reading overly verbose alt text. Sigh. This was written by an LLM wasn’t it? Continue being me, get confused by alt text, zoom into comic and strain vision to read it, notice alt text said it’s four panels arranged horizontally when it’s actually a 2 by 2 square, fail to find the “small cylindrical object between the two mice” from the alt text, realize one of the characters is that object but not a mouse and not cylindrical. Sigh. I was so happy with the culture of using alt text on the Fedi, but it’s being flooded by wasteful and incorrect descriptions promoted as helpful. The tech bros are winning. Human art and thoughtfully communication is being chewed up by machines that waste power and water while pretending to help people. If AltBot provides you a description, I beg of you to write one yourself instead. You know what you posted, you know why, you know what’s important and what it means. I want that. I want what the human posting for other humans wants to share. #blind #accessibility #AIslop

Replies (4)

@JaxVent@lgbtqia.space 2025-11-20 11:19

@MostlyBlindGamer @akamran @altbot @Jyoti I feel like using ai to write alt text is a tick box exercise with little thought for the person reading it.

Open ##1250661
@Numerfolt@kirche.social 2025-11-20 14:31

@MostlyBlindGamer @akamran @altbot @Jyoti That's really crap.

Open ##1250663
@dascandy@infosec.exchange 2025-11-20 17:11

@MostlyBlindGamer @akamran @altbot @Jyoti Strong +1. Also, *everybody* reads alt text. It's part of your message. Do you want that to look like a pile of slop? Use it as an extra channel to provide not just what the image contains but your interpretation of it!

Open ##1250664
@beecycling@wandering.shop 2025-11-20 17:43

@MostlyBlindGamer @akamran @altbot @Jyoti A little while back I wrote the alt text for a Peanuts cartoon from a tear off one a day calendar. And writing the alt text made me really think about the cartoon and analyse how well written and drawn it was, and gave me an extra appreciation for it. So the alt text was just as useful to me as to other people. https://romancelandia.club/@beecycling/115169004075896475

Open ##1250665