Boosts apprec:
Do I have anybody in my social graph who’s vision-impaired enough to be the target of alt-text?
Realtalk: in 2025, is manual alt text (of OCR-able images, I mean) by humans still a necessary thing that we should be enforcing aggressive social pressure around? /=
(It feels a little stupid, if random non-specialized-accessibility tooling like consumer phone operating-systems now have near-perfect OCR. I'm not a user of the tools that _are_ specialized for accessibility, but I imagine that they're even more cutting-edge, and have been OCR'ing at least that well for several years now?)
But, like, I also recognize that I’m not in the target market, there. So where are we? Somebody catch me up. Is this Mastodon culture of alt-text-enforcement just cargo-culting at this point, or does it still have a purpose?
@mivox@mivox.net@ELLIOTTCABLE I ask myself that question about text screencaps, but it’s so trivial to copy paste the text into the alt field anyhow, I do it anyway. And I figure not everyone on the internet can afford the newest & best tools.
But for non-text images, there is nothing that takes the place of alt text. There are “AI” alt text tools, but they’re awful. “AI” can’t interpret a picture for shit, so the description is most often just wrong.
@mivox ah, yes, I explicitly and only meant of, like, textual things. Edited my original post!
(I figure non-duplicative _descriptions_ are useful to everybody; they aren't really an accessibility-focused thing, in my head, as much.
Hell, half of the subreddits out there have rules requiring an explanatory comment be posted with every image. Context is key.)
@mivox@mivox.net@ELLIOTTCABLE Ah, OK. 
I don’t personally use a screen reader, but I always look for alt text first when someone posts text that they clearly screen capped on a desktop, or is an image of like a full 8.5x11 letter or something. Today’s screen readers may or may not have a problem with microprint images, but my old eyeballs sure do. 
@ELLIOTTCABLE I don't have significant vision impairment (just glasses/contacts), but alt text is useful for me:
1. I often browse with image loading turned off in my client, e.g. while riding transit, especially the subway
2. I use mastodon.el a lot, easily about 50% of my masto time, usually within terminal emacs over SSH, where image descriptions let me fully participate
3. I follow a bunch of people who post in non-English and the translate function handles alt text
4. Searchability!!
@jsstaedtler@mastodon.art@gnomon @ELLIOTTCABLE I do enjoy how most replies are from people *without* significant vision impairment but who still have a better experience with alt text (myself included!). Really, this kind of accomodation allows more people to enjoy the content not just how they *must*, but also how they *want to*.
I want to help foster a community that invites and supports such people, and that means promoting the use of assistive tools. ...Though there are certainly *wrong* ways to promote them.
@jsstaedtler @gnomon tbh, slightly the opposite. (Not immensely, but ~1–2-out-of-ten annoyed that I immediately got several replies from folks who are not the category of people I explicitly targeted the question to. Very Mastodon Moment.)
There's an important and fundamental difference between making spaces enjoyable and making spaces accessible - in fact, that's largely the _point_ of "accessibility" as a concept. It's specifically there to establish a hierarchy: your taste desires do not trump my taste desires, but your accessibility needs *do* trump my taste desires.
@jsstaedtler @gnomon When one hosts an event, for instance, there might be attendees who really don't like the room to be warm; and others who really don't like the room to be cold.
You can kinda please either, but not both; and nonetheless, it’d be (rightfully) considered rude for a random third party to be like "yo. organizer. you're excluding cold-liking people who don't want to come because it's warm; make it cold, even if the warm-liking people don't want you to. you're running a bad envent.”
@jsstaedtler @gnomon However, if you have attendees who don't like walking up long ramps, and chairbound attendees who literally *cannot come at all* if you do not include long ramps, then it's kinda, tbh, appropriate? for a random third party to point out to you that “yo, you're excluding people living in wheelchairs; plz fix that or i ain't coming.”
@jsstaedtler @gnomon similarly, while it's cool as fuck that there's TUI clients (I didn't even know that, and I'm amazed how many people use them) … that's just, fundamentally, not the same thing as "I was born unable to use this space you're fostering by the choices you're making.” Y'know?
and it follows that random-third-party saying “u suck and i won't interact with you if you don't accomodate <X>" has a very, very different vibe when <X> is ‘people who choose a TUI' than when <X> is ‘people who didn't make a choice to be disabled.’
@jsstaedtler @gnomon tl;dr it's important to me in life to figure out whom I should be defending and standing up for; and Emacs users ain't that, tbh :P
@jsstaedtler @gnomon (and sorry if this came across as jumping down any particular individual's throat - clearly, I have strong feelings about accessible spaces, lol. 
)
@jsstaedtler@mastodon.art@ELLIOTTCABLE "Very Mastodon Moment." - Okay yeah, you're totally right on that account, and I just blindly perpetuated it, sorry 
I appreciate your point of ability vs. preference, but I feel like the bigger issue is the people who just don't care about who's excluded for either reason. Then we have folks who want to convince them to care, but that manifests as militant shaming. And none of that is what you had asked for, which is more like "isn't there an easier way to do the right thing?"
@jsstaedtler yeah; the last bit nails it, too. I see a lot of important virtue signaling (how did that phrase become loaded negatively — literally all social animals virtue-signal, its fundamental to society-building) that gets disconnected from its roots. Sometimes that stuff even ends up harming the people it was originated to protect.
(In my head, I call this “fossilized signaling.” In the linguistics sense, i.e. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossilization_(linguistics).)
@ELLIOTTCABLE Wait, how does OCR obviate the need for alt text? Not all images are OCR-able screenshots of text.
(Personally I often use a terminal client that only loads images in ASCII-art-like rendering; and sometimes the vagaries of federation mean that images don't load, but the alt text does.)
@nev yah, I tried to edit the OP, but I don't think I examined my own assumptions very well. To me, but apparently not everyone else, ‘describe images w/o text in them’ is just an obvious necessity for all consumers - and I always read the aggressive fediverse “you MUST alt ALL the things!!!" as an cover-the-other-bases, accessibility-focused mantra.
My question basically applies to images like this one: https://functional.cafe/@ELLIOTTCABLE/114232194309794010
Trying to describe the contents of a screenshot just feels so pointless, and like a turn-off to usage of the fediverse; but I see _so_ many accounts with something like "I will unfollow you if you post any images without alt-text.”
It feels like cargo-culting, and I want to check that assumption/feeling of mine against someone with actual experience as the target-market of these things.
A few years ago I (fully sighted) was invited to a discussion on accessibility for people who are blind or have low vision. While Ontario has disability programs to provide assistive devices, they prescribe specific technologies, often years out-of-date. So while there might be new technology that can OCR text-only images, people using ODSP (Ontario Disability Support Program) often can't use it or afford it.
TL;DR: Always provide AltText even for text-only images.
@bobjonkman this is useful information, and an angle I had not considered. Thank you.
Here are my notes from that info session on accessibility:
https://bobjonkman.ca/2018/05/29/notes-from-the-revision-adp-information-session/
@ELLIOTTCABLE I am (currently, but with increasing difficulty) sighted, and I still benefit from alt text. It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but they frequently leave out which words those are.
The alt text helps clarify the context of a picture more frequently than not. Not too long ago, I tried to do a reverse image search. The input image was one of my cats. The result was a page full of guinea pigs. Alt text could have been used to help narrow the search criteria down.
So yes, I strongly encourage people to use alt text. It benefits everyone, not just those with vision impairment.
@ELLIOTTCABLE @bobjonkman I benefit from alt text when I’m on a spotty internet connection and the images don’t load. Good alt text is crucial in those cases
@ELLIOTTCABLE I occasionally get replies that let me know the alt text helped them figure out what was supposed to be important or funny in the image; it’s a good place to stash clarifying information without distracting from the flow of the main post. Automated captioning can’t help with the “why” aspect.
I don’t think it’s some horrible disaster if you forget to alt text a random cat photo on your personal account, though.