Post #2170656
2023-07-18 11:33 UTC
Replies (40)
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@js@mastodon.nl 2023-07-18 11:37
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social A few well-chosen words are worth thousands of pictures.
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@jonathanavt@mastodon.nl 2023-07-18 12:37
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social I’ve been thinking what to do there. My natural instinct is to bluntly state what I want people to take away from the picture. I add some flair at times to counter that. I also use it as extra characters for potential clarification for anyone, regardless of their sight, but from replies it’s evident that I can’t expect it to be read. Not worth putting too much time into at my level of readership. Just don’t leave someone who can’t see the picture puzzled.
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@clintruin@mastodon.social 2023-07-18 13:32
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social okay...okay...Jeez, I'll start using the description box. Damn.
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@Manigarm@mastodon.social 2023-07-18 13:51
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social I also enjoy using the descriptions to hide my snide remarks. :P
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@phil@dice.camp 2023-07-18 14:00
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social I've been shamed by a bot for not providing an alt text often enough down here, now I always provide one.
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@KI5SMN@mastodon.hams.social 2023-07-18 14:05
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social The default text length for an alt text decription is 2000 characters, IIRC, and the default post length is only 500 characters. So it gives one something to think about.
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@fantasticfont@mstdn.social 2023-07-18 14:25
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social I just started reading it cuz of you
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@TobiWanKenobi@kolektiva.social 2023-07-18 14:45
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social This ⬆️ 💯 #AltText is super important. I'd love everyone on Mastodon, new and old, to realize this ‼️
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@BonehouseWasps@mastodon.social 2023-07-18 14:50
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social If you search #AltTextAward you'll find some great examples.
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@prettyhuman@piipitin.fi 2023-07-18 14:52
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social Sounds like you might find the captions on Muppets’ ”Popcorn” song worthy if reading. :blobcatfingerguns: https://youtu.be/B7UmUX68KtE
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@diddieffe@mastodon.social 2023-07-18 15:08
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social it's definitely another case of the Curb cut effect! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curb_cut_effect And that is why we need universal design for everything.
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@Wildduck@mamot.fr 2023-07-18 15:17
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social A summary of what I read : the main goal is to provide the essential information the media convey ("An old steam train"). Writing the type of media is appreciated (photo, painting, gif,...). You can add details but that's what matter the most. Good additional details give more clues of why the image is relevant (like the global vibe of the picture). After that, yeah everything fancy is appreciated. Not to do : put the licence, links, or only easter eggs, etc. in the alt text.
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@robotistry@sciencemastodon.com 2023-07-18 15:45
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social I love how alt text shows me what the person thought was the important thing about an image - it's a whole new perspective!
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@jon_alper@mastodon.online 2023-07-18 16:02
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social @lisamelton@mastodon.social Accessibility is for everyone. Even the machines that index content.
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@steeef@hachyderm.io 2023-07-18 16:25
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social Good reminder that prioritizing accessibility benefits everyone.
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@Punko@calckey.social 2023-07-18 16:28
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social this is actually one of my favorite things about Fedi social media. I really appreciate good #AltText, and strive to write them well, myself. I won’t boost any image without it, and usually also won’t boost AltText that doesn’t try to convey the image in a meaningful way. There are some Golden People out there giving master classes on image descriptions.
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@AmiW@mastodon.online 2023-07-18 16:39
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social ♥️🤗
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@JustinDerrick@mstdn.ca 2023-07-18 16:49
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social In my mind, #AltText should be a little extra something special that tells it's own story and accentuates it's details so that folks with vision impairment can enjoy it too. :)
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@gryphonEschmidt@wandering.shop 2023-07-18 17:06
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social I feel somewhat like the Alt text on here is somewhat like talking in the tags is/was on Tumblr for some posts and I love it. It becomes its own dialect
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@darlan16@mastodon.social 2023-07-18 17:09
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social It is true. Sometimes we find first-rate literary texts - poems, short chronicles, photos taken by amateurs with identical cameras - that are jewels, and don't even take into account the thousand nullities. * É verdade. Às vezes, a gente encontra textos literários de primeira ordem - poemas, pequenas crônicas, fotos feitas por amadores, com câmeras idem, que são joias, e nem se leve em conta as mil nulidades.
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@JStatePost@newsie.social 2023-07-18 18:16
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social 🥥 Merci beaucoup, Francois, for your beautiful ode to #AltText and the nifty group of hashtags you included at the end. 🥥
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@ahimsa_pdx@disabled.social 2023-07-18 18:38
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social Check out hashtag #TheArtofAlt for a few examples of detailed alt text descriptions
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@geobeck@mastodon.online 2023-07-18 18:57
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social I never thought much about alt text before joining Mastodon, but I quickly began to see it as an opportunity rather than just an extra step before posting. A detailed caption has so much potential to add to the post.
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@harmonygritz@mastodon.social 2023-07-18 19:15
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social This is possibly the only effective way to encourage alt text: Share your experience, and let people create poetry.
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@ialioo@ieji.de 2023-07-18 20:09
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social I was just thinking about this when I discovered the alt descriptions of posts by @atomicker@mstdn.ca 😄 great to read ✨
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@humbird0@mstdn.party 2023-07-18 20:29
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social Yeah, I love putting jokes and commentary in there. Unfortunately it probably doesn't really help the visually impaired. Technically ALT text and Title text are 2 different things, but Mastodon doesn't give me the option to separate the two. So the jokes go where they go.
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@jeffreyfisher@tldr.nettime.org 2023-07-18 21:22
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social Necessity is the mother of invention. I recall a time when some of us wondered if campus rules around sexual consent might provoke something similar. Alas.
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@richardrathe@universeodon.com 2023-07-18 22:06
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social Also frustrating that I can’t get all that nice detail in the body of the post. If there’s a trick I haven’t discovered please advise. No hover on most phones and pads. 🙁 I think #AltText was intended to display when images were not available or the reader had a visual impairment. Highly detailed descriptions or explanations are better displayed as captions IMO.
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@fgbjr@indieweb.social 2023-07-19 01:19
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social Have box will scribble
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@wallacewords@mastodon.sdf.org 2023-07-19 01:36
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social Lovely! I have thought the same, and am now inspired to be more poetic.
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@dragfyre@mastodon.sandwich.net 2023-07-19 11:58
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social I'm getting so used to it now. There's a whole ocean of subtext in ALT text, just waiting for us all to dive in.
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@lynnedubois@mastodon.online 2023-07-19 15:34
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social I gave up writing long, detailed descriptions bc I'd lose them due to computer glitches. So frustrating lol.
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@hannah@social.alt-text.org 2023-07-20 01:24
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social I'm a few days from releasing a site, and shortly after a set of browser extensions, targeted at making it easier to compose alt text, all with no data leaving your computer. Features and requests can be found here: https://social.alt-text.org/@hannah/110743592894597654
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@Faylen@disabled.social 2023-07-20 19:02
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social This is so awesome! As a blind screen reader user, alt text let me be part of the conversation when there are images. What I never realized is how useful they can be for other disabilities, or other people who may not be disabled and still enjoy them!
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@HistoPol@mastodon.social 2023-07-21 16:28
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social This is one of the best reasonings why we should all continue to strive for even more and complete #AltText s. 😀 https://mastodon.social/@fheinderyckx/110734867993104818 @echanda@mstdn.ca #alttext #inclusivity #mastodon #netiquette #tootiquette
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@anarchademic@kolektiva.social 2023-07-21 20:23
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social #AltText can be poetry (ekphrastic poetry) https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/ekphrasis
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@Chrtz@mastodon.social 2023-07-22 19:20
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social I just hope they'll finally fix the image handling in general. No more cut-off images, no more squashed og-/twitter-images, etc.
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@jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu 2023-07-23 20:13
@@vic@howcyborgs.chat If that's Going Wild for you, you should see what's possible elsewhere. I've written two experimental alt-texts for this picture (no embedding although I could because reasons), not being poetic, all being only informative. But I've described just about everything in the picture, just in case someone might be unfamiliar with it. And seeing as it was taken in a rather obscure virtual 3-D world, people being unfamiliar with it are the standard rather than an exception. The shorter one with only a few transcribed signs has 7,636 characters. The longer one also explains everything that might be unfamiliar and adds transcriptions of everything with one exception: I couldn't source the black panel behind the tree anymore. Still, it ended up with 10,985 characters. Here on Hubzilla, I don't have to deal with character limits. I could have transcribed everything including that black panel, I could have hit 12,000 characters, and I could still have crammed it all into an alt-text which would have been fully visible on Hubzilla and instances of a few other projects. In theory, at least; I'm not sure how either of them handle the displaying of an alt-text the size of a newspaper article. I didn't actually make either into an alt-text, however, because almost all my readers are on Mastodon which would have capped the alt-text at 1,500 characters, not even a seventh of the longer alt-text draft. The entire description of everything inside the building would have been lost, as well as all transcriptions. If you're curious, and you've got a lot of reading time, I've written an article about it which contains both alt-text drafts as well as re-shared examples of Mastodon posts with pictures with detailed alt-texts which aren't that detailed themselves. @@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social And I think this goes to show that such a thing as too much alt-text is possible. You're free to deny that, of course.
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@MizzBassie@toot.cat 2023-08-22 13:39
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social @purplepadma@beige.party And then there are people who describe their photos as “tree,” for example.
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@Lupus@mastodon.social 2023-08-27 16:14
@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social @JL_Lycette@mindly.social I have just said the same thing, I am glad that I am not the only one who is experiencing it. I was afraid that it might be just me.