#imagedescription — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #imagedescription, aggregated by home.social.
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@Tom Cole It is available everywhere AFAIK.
But: The convenient black "Alt" button in the corner is exclusive to Mastodon's Web interface plus maybe a few phone apps that have adopted it since. Technically speaking, a UI element to show alt-texts is completely unnecessary because alt-text is only a stand-in for the image itself, for when the image cannot be seen for whichever reason. The alt-text as an extra source of information is a purely Mastodon thing where people use it to expand their meagre 500-character limit by up to another 6,000 characters.
Just about everywhere else in the Fediverse, there is no button for showing alt-texts. That's also because there's nowhere in the Fediverse where people really need alt-texts to write around their tiny character limits, so that alt-texts can be what alt-texts are literally everywhere outside of Mastodon: a stand-in for the image and nothing more than that.
The normal way in the Fediverse (and other social networks and social media) for sighted people to access an alt-text is by moving the mouse cursor upon the image and hovering in there, and the alt-text pops up. The alt-text is thetitletag at the same time. This has been the case on Mastodon before, I think, version 4.4 as well. I guess Mastodon changed that because just about everyone on Mastodon is on phones, and you don't have a mouse cursor on a phone, so you have to long-press on the image which is a not very intuitive thing to do.
Here on Hubzilla where I'm commenting from right now, the alt-text still is thetitletag as well. In order to read an alt-text, the mouse cursor has to be hovered above the image. And Hubzilla has no alternative to its Web interface, only different themes for the Web interface. There is no phone app, at least none worth speaking of.
Also, on Hubzilla, we don't need to use alt-texts to write around character limits. Our character limit is 16,777,215, and that's the maximum size of the database field for the message text. Actually, on Hubzilla, alt-texts are included in these over 16 million characters as opposed to separate data fields. Thus, sighted Hubzilla users have no use for alt-texts whatsoever. Thus, there's no reason to make opening alt-texts easier (as if that was Hubzilla's only UI issue). Thus, there's no "Alt" button, and there will never be one.
It's just about the same just about everywhere else from Misskey (hard-coded 3,000 characters) to Akkoma (configurable 5,000 characters) to Friendica (same limit as Hubzilla) to (streams) and Forte (over 24 million characters) to pure long-form blogging stuff like WordPress, Ghost, Write Freely and Plume.
Now I ask you: What are people supposed to do whose both hands had to be amputated due to some accident? Or people with deformed hands who can neither use a smartphone nor a computer mouse nor a trackball nor any other pointing device on a computer? Who operate their computer with e.g. a headpointer, a plastic stick strapped to their forehead with which they poke the keys on their computer? And who are in the Fediverse, but not on Mastodon? How are they supposed to open an alt-text with only a keyboard as an input device?
Or how about people with a severe tremor? Who have big troubles moving a mouse cursor over an image and then keeping it there because it keeps slipping away? Who probably operate their computers via the keyboard and only the keyboard, too?
Or, a wholly different example, how about those who use Linux with a super-minimalist, keyboard-only tiling window manager? Who do have a GUI (albeit a very frugal one), who do use graphical Web browsers, but who deliberately, intentionaly, do not have any kind of pointing device? Who, nonetheless, are ten times faster with only keyboard shortcuts than you and me are with a mouse? How are they supposed to move a mouse cursor over an image without a mouse?
This is something that many Mastodon users don't know:- Not all Fediverse frontends have an "Alt" button.
- "Alt" buttons make no sense in the non-Mastodon Fediverse. In the non-Mastodon Fediverse, the character limits are so high that nobody has to use alt-texts to write around them. Expanding the character limit with alt-texts is a 100% Mastodon-only thing that simply doesn't translate to places with thousands or millions of characters and never will.
- There are other disabilities out there than visual impairments and neurodivergence. Even in the Fediverse.
- Not everyone in the Fediverse uses a pointing device of whichever sorts.
Oh, and there's one more thing: Misskey and its various forks (Sharkey, Iceshrimp-JS, CherryPick etc.) all have a character limit of 512 for alt-texts. They should enforce it the same way as Mastodon enforces its 1,500-character limit for alt-texts, namely by truncating longer alt-texts. This is bad enough already.
However, they all have the same nasty bug that still hasn't been fixed yet AFAIK: Instead of truncating longer alt-texts, they delete them. So if you describe your image in an alt-text of more than 512 characters, users on Misskey, Sharkey & Co. will never know that your image is supposed to have an alt-text. Instead, they may think that you were too lazy to describe your image. And if you use the alt-text to explain your image in over 512 characters, this explanation will never reach users on Misskey, Sharkey & Co.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #i3 #i3wm #Disability #A11y #Accessibility -
@Tom Cole It is available everywhere AFAIK.
But: The convenient black "Alt" button in the corner is exclusive to Mastodon's Web interface plus maybe a few phone apps that have adopted it since. Technically speaking, a UI element to show alt-texts is completely unnecessary because alt-text is only a stand-in for the image itself, for when the image cannot be seen for whichever reason. The alt-text as an extra source of information is a purely Mastodon thing where people use it to expand their meagre 500-character limit by up to another 6,000 characters.
Just about everywhere else in the Fediverse, there is no button for showing alt-texts. That's also because there's nowhere in the Fediverse where people really need alt-texts to write around their tiny character limits, so that alt-texts can be what alt-texts are literally everywhere outside of Mastodon: a stand-in for the image and nothing more than that.
The normal way in the Fediverse (and other social networks and social media) for sighted people to access an alt-text is by moving the mouse cursor upon the image and hovering in there, and the alt-text pops up. The alt-text is thetitletag at the same time. This has been the case on Mastodon before, I think, version 4.4 as well. I guess Mastodon changed that because just about everyone on Mastodon is on phones, and you don't have a mouse cursor on a phone, so you have to long-press on the image which is a not very intuitive thing to do.
Here on Hubzilla where I'm commenting from right now, the alt-text still is thetitletag as well. In order to read an alt-text, the mouse cursor has to be hovered above the image. And Hubzilla has no alternative to its Web interface, only different themes for the Web interface. There is no phone app, at least none worth speaking of.
Also, on Hubzilla, we don't need to use alt-texts to write around character limits. Our character limit is 16,777,215, and that's the maximum size of the database field for the message text. Actually, on Hubzilla, alt-texts are included in these over 16 million characters as opposed to separate data fields. Thus, sighted Hubzilla users have no use for alt-texts whatsoever. Thus, there's no reason to make opening alt-texts easier (as if that was Hubzilla's only UI issue). Thus, there's no "Alt" button, and there will never be one.
It's just about the same just about everywhere else from Misskey (hard-coded 3,000 characters) to Akkoma (configurable 5,000 characters) to Friendica (same limit as Hubzilla) to (streams) and Forte (over 24 million characters) to pure long-form blogging stuff like WordPress, Ghost, Write Freely and Plume.
Now I ask you: What are people supposed to do whose both hands had to be amputated due to some accident? Or people with deformed hands who can neither use a smartphone nor a computer mouse nor a trackball nor any other pointing device on a computer? Who operate their computer with e.g. a headpointer, a plastic stick strapped to their forehead with which they poke the keys on their computer? And who are in the Fediverse, but not on Mastodon? How are they supposed to open an alt-text with only a keyboard as an input device?
Or how about people with a severe tremor? Who have big troubles moving a mouse cursor over an image and then keeping it there because it keeps slipping away? Who probably operate their computers via the keyboard and only the keyboard, too?
Or, a wholly different example, how about those who use Linux with a super-minimalist, keyboard-only tiling window manager? Who do have a GUI (albeit a very frugal one), who do use graphical Web browsers, but who deliberately, intentionaly, do not have any kind of pointing device? Who, nonetheless, are ten times faster with only keyboard shortcuts than you and me are with a mouse? How are they supposed to move a mouse cursor over an image without a mouse?
This is something that many Mastodon users don't know:- Not all Fediverse frontends have an "Alt" button.
- "Alt" buttons make no sense in the non-Mastodon Fediverse. In the non-Mastodon Fediverse, the character limits are so high that nobody has to use alt-texts to write around them. Expanding the character limit with alt-texts is a 100% Mastodon-only thing that simply doesn't translate to places with thousands or millions of characters and never will.
- There are other disabilities out there than visual impairments and neurodivergence. Even in the Fediverse.
- Not everyone in the Fediverse uses a pointing device of whichever sorts.
Oh, and there's one more thing: Misskey and its various forks (Sharkey, Iceshrimp-JS, CherryPick etc.) all have a character limit of 512 for alt-texts. They should enforce it the same way as Mastodon enforces its 1,500-character limit for alt-texts, namely by truncating longer alt-texts. This is bad enough already.
However, they all have the same nasty bug that still hasn't been fixed yet AFAIK: Instead of truncating longer alt-texts, they delete them. So if you describe your image in an alt-text of more than 512 characters, users on Misskey, Sharkey & Co. will never know that your image is supposed to have an alt-text. Instead, they may think that you were too lazy to describe your image. And if you use the alt-text to explain your image in over 512 characters, this explanation will never reach users on Misskey, Sharkey & Co.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #i3 #i3wm #Disability #A11y #Accessibility -
@Tom Cole It is available everywhere AFAIK.
But: The convenient black "Alt" button in the corner is exclusive to Mastodon's Web interface plus maybe a few phone apps that have adopted it since. Technically speaking, a UI element to show alt-texts is completely unnecessary because alt-text is only a stand-in for the image itself, for when the image cannot be seen for whichever reason. The alt-text as an extra source of information is a purely Mastodon thing where people use it to expand their meagre 500-character limit by up to another 6,000 characters.
Just about everywhere else in the Fediverse, there is no button for showing alt-texts. That's also because there's nowhere in the Fediverse where people really need alt-texts to write around their tiny character limits, so that alt-texts can be what alt-texts are literally everywhere outside of Mastodon: a stand-in for the image and nothing more than that.
The normal way in the Fediverse (and other social networks and social media) for sighted people to access an alt-text is by moving the mouse cursor upon the image and hovering in there, and the alt-text pops up. The alt-text is thetitletag at the same time. This has been the case on Mastodon before, I think, version 4.4 as well. I guess Mastodon changed that because just about everyone on Mastodon is on phones, and you don't have a mouse cursor on a phone, so you have to long-press on the image which is a not very intuitive thing to do.
Here on Hubzilla where I'm commenting from right now, the alt-text still is thetitletag as well. In order to read an alt-text, the mouse cursor has to be hovered above the image. And Hubzilla has no alternative to its Web interface, only different themes for the Web interface. There is no phone app, at least none worth speaking of.
Also, on Hubzilla, we don't need to use alt-texts to write around character limits. Our character limit is 16,777,215, and that's the maximum size of the database field for the message text. Actually, on Hubzilla, alt-texts are included in these over 16 million characters as opposed to separate data fields. Thus, sighted Hubzilla users have no use for alt-texts whatsoever. Thus, there's no reason to make opening alt-texts easier (as if that was Hubzilla's only UI issue). Thus, there's no "Alt" button, and there will never be one.
It's just about the same just about everywhere else from Misskey (hard-coded 3,000 characters) to Akkoma (configurable 5,000 characters) to Friendica (same limit as Hubzilla) to (streams) and Forte (over 24 million characters) to pure long-form blogging stuff like WordPress, Ghost, Write Freely and Plume.
Now I ask you: What are people supposed to do whose both hands had to be amputated due to some accident? Or people with deformed hands who can neither use a smartphone nor a computer mouse nor a trackball nor any other pointing device on a computer? Who operate their computer with e.g. a headpointer, a plastic stick strapped to their forehead with which they poke the keys on their computer? And who are in the Fediverse, but not on Mastodon? How are they supposed to open an alt-text with only a keyboard as an input device?
Or how about people with a severe tremor? Who have big troubles moving a mouse cursor over an image and then keeping it there because it keeps slipping away? Who probably operate their computers via the keyboard and only the keyboard, too?
Or, a wholly different example, how about those who use Linux with a super-minimalist, keyboard-only tiling window manager? Who do have a GUI (albeit a very frugal one), who do use graphical Web browsers, but who deliberately, intentionaly, do not have any kind of pointing device? Who, nonetheless, are ten times faster with only keyboard shortcuts than you and me are with a mouse? How are they supposed to move a mouse cursor over an image without a mouse?
This is something that many Mastodon users don't know:- Not all Fediverse frontends have an "Alt" button.
- "Alt" buttons make no sense in the non-Mastodon Fediverse. In the non-Mastodon Fediverse, the character limits are so high that nobody has to use alt-texts to write around them. Expanding the character limit with alt-texts is a 100% Mastodon-only thing that simply doesn't translate to places with thousands or millions of characters and never will.
- There are other disabilities out there than visual impairments and neurodivergence. Even in the Fediverse.
- Not everyone in the Fediverse uses a pointing device of whichever sorts.
Oh, and there's one more thing: Misskey and its various forks (Sharkey, Iceshrimp-JS, CherryPick etc.) all have a character limit of 512 for alt-texts. They should enforce it the same way as Mastodon enforces its 1,500-character limit for alt-texts, namely by truncating longer alt-texts. This is bad enough already.
However, they all have the same nasty bug that still hasn't been fixed yet AFAIK: Instead of truncating longer alt-texts, they delete them. So if you describe your image in an alt-text of more than 512 characters, users on Misskey, Sharkey & Co. will never know that your image is supposed to have an alt-text. Instead, they may think that you were too lazy to describe your image. And if you use the alt-text to explain your image in over 512 characters, this explanation will never reach users on Misskey, Sharkey & Co.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #i3 #i3wm #Disability #A11y #Accessibility -
@Tom Cole It is available everywhere AFAIK.
But: The convenient black "Alt" button in the corner is exclusive to Mastodon's Web interface plus maybe a few phone apps that have adopted it since. Technically speaking, a UI element to show alt-texts is completely unnecessary because alt-text is only a stand-in for the image itself, for when the image cannot be seen for whichever reason. The alt-text as an extra source of information is a purely Mastodon thing where people use it to expand their meagre 500-character limit by up to another 6,000 characters.
Just about everywhere else in the Fediverse, there is no button for showing alt-texts. That's also because there's nowhere in the Fediverse where people really need alt-texts to write around their tiny character limits, so that alt-texts can be what alt-texts are literally everywhere outside of Mastodon: a stand-in for the image and nothing more than that.
The normal way in the Fediverse (and other social networks and social media) for sighted people to access an alt-text is by moving the mouse cursor upon the image and hovering in there, and the alt-text pops up. The alt-text is thetitletag at the same time. This has been the case on Mastodon before, I think, version 4.4 as well. I guess Mastodon changed that because just about everyone on Mastodon is on phones, and you don't have a mouse cursor on a phone, so you have to long-press on the image which is a not very intuitive thing to do.
Here on Hubzilla where I'm commenting from right now, the alt-text still is thetitletag as well. In order to read an alt-text, the mouse cursor has to be hovered above the image. And Hubzilla has no alternative to its Web interface, only different themes for the Web interface. There is no phone app, at least none worth speaking of.
Also, on Hubzilla, we don't need to use alt-texts to write around character limits. Our character limit is 16,777,215, and that's the maximum size of the database field for the message text. Actually, on Hubzilla, alt-texts are included in these over 16 million characters as opposed to separate data fields. Thus, sighted Hubzilla users have no use for alt-texts whatsoever. Thus, there's no reason to make opening alt-texts easier (as if that was Hubzilla's only UI issue). Thus, there's no "Alt" button, and there will never be one.
It's just about the same just about everywhere else from Misskey (hard-coded 3,000 characters) to Akkoma (configurable 5,000 characters) to Friendica (same limit as Hubzilla) to (streams) and Forte (over 24 million characters) to pure long-form blogging stuff like WordPress, Ghost, Write Freely and Plume.
Now I ask you: What are people supposed to do whose both hands had to be amputated due to some accident? Or people with deformed hands who can neither use a smartphone nor a computer mouse nor a trackball nor any other pointing device on a computer? Who operate their computer with e.g. a headpointer, a plastic stick strapped to their forehead with which they poke the keys on their computer? And who are in the Fediverse, but not on Mastodon? How are they supposed to open an alt-text with only a keyboard as an input device?
Or how about people with a severe tremor? Who have big troubles moving a mouse cursor over an image and then keeping it there because it keeps slipping away? Who probably operate their computers via the keyboard and only the keyboard, too?
Or, a wholly different example, how about those who use Linux with a super-minimalist, keyboard-only tiling window manager? Who do have a GUI (albeit a very frugal one), who do use graphical Web browsers, but who deliberately, intentionaly, do not have any kind of pointing device? Who, nonetheless, are ten times faster with only keyboard shortcuts than you and me are with a mouse? How are they supposed to move a mouse cursor over an image without a mouse?
This is something that many Mastodon users don't know:- Not all Fediverse frontends have an "Alt" button.
- "Alt" buttons make no sense in the non-Mastodon Fediverse. In the non-Mastodon Fediverse, the character limits are so high that nobody has to use alt-texts to write around them. Expanding the character limit with alt-texts is a 100% Mastodon-only thing that simply doesn't translate to places with thousands or millions of characters and never will.
- There are other disabilities out there than visual impairments and neurodivergence. Even in the Fediverse.
- Not everyone in the Fediverse uses a pointing device of whichever sorts.
Oh, and there's one more thing: Misskey and its various forks (Sharkey, Iceshrimp-JS, CherryPick etc.) all have a character limit of 512 for alt-texts. They should enforce it the same way as Mastodon enforces its 1,500-character limit for alt-texts, namely by truncating longer alt-texts. This is bad enough already.
However, they all have the same nasty bug that still hasn't been fixed yet AFAIK: Instead of truncating longer alt-texts, they delete them. So if you describe your image in an alt-text of more than 512 characters, users on Misskey, Sharkey & Co. will never know that your image is supposed to have an alt-text. Instead, they may think that you were too lazy to describe your image. And if you use the alt-text to explain your image in over 512 characters, this explanation will never reach users on Misskey, Sharkey & Co.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #i3 #i3wm #Disability #A11y #Accessibility -
@Tom Cole It is available everywhere AFAIK.
But: The convenient black "Alt" button in the corner is exclusive to Mastodon's Web interface plus maybe a few phone apps that have adopted it since. Technically speaking, a UI element to show alt-texts is completely unnecessary because alt-text is only a stand-in for the image itself, for when the image cannot be seen for whichever reason. The alt-text as an extra source of information is a purely Mastodon thing where people use it to expand their meagre 500-character limit by up to another 6,000 characters.
Just about everywhere else in the Fediverse, there is no button for showing alt-texts. That's also because there's nowhere in the Fediverse where people really need alt-texts to write around their tiny character limits, so that alt-texts can be what alt-texts are literally everywhere outside of Mastodon: a stand-in for the image and nothing more than that.
The normal way in the Fediverse (and other social networks and social media) for sighted people to access an alt-text is by moving the mouse cursor upon the image and hovering in there, and the alt-text pops up. The alt-text is thetitletag at the same time. This has been the case on Mastodon before, I think, version 4.4 as well. I guess Mastodon changed that because just about everyone on Mastodon is on phones, and you don't have a mouse cursor on a phone, so you have to long-press on the image which is a not very intuitive thing to do.
Here on Hubzilla where I'm commenting from right now, the alt-text still is thetitletag as well. In order to read an alt-text, the mouse cursor has to be hovered above the image. And Hubzilla has no alternative to its Web interface, only different themes for the Web interface. There is no phone app, at least none worth speaking of.
Also, on Hubzilla, we don't need to use alt-texts to write around character limits. Our character limit is 16,777,215, and that's the maximum size of the database field for the message text. Actually, on Hubzilla, alt-texts are included in these over 16 million characters as opposed to separate data fields. Thus, sighted Hubzilla users have no use for alt-texts whatsoever. Thus, there's no reason to make opening alt-texts easier (as if that was Hubzilla's only UI issue). Thus, there's no "Alt" button, and there will never be one.
It's just about the same just about everywhere else from Misskey (hard-coded 3,000 characters) to Akkoma (configurable 5,000 characters) to Friendica (same limit as Hubzilla) to (streams) and Forte (over 24 million characters) to pure long-form blogging stuff like WordPress, Ghost, Write Freely and Plume.
Now I ask you: What are people supposed to do whose both hands had to be amputated due to some accident? Or people with deformed hands who can neither use a smartphone nor a computer mouse nor a trackball nor any other pointing device on a computer? Who operate their computer with e.g. a headpointer, a plastic stick strapped to their forehead with which they poke the keys on their computer? And who are in the Fediverse, but not on Mastodon? How are they supposed to open an alt-text with only a keyboard as an input device?
Or how about people with a severe tremor? Who have big troubles moving a mouse cursor over an image and then keeping it there because it keeps slipping away? Who probably operate their computers via the keyboard and only the keyboard, too?
Or, a wholly different example, how about those who use Linux with a super-minimalist, keyboard-only tiling window manager? Who do have a GUI (albeit a very frugal one), who do use graphical Web browsers, but who deliberately, intentionaly, do not have any kind of pointing device? Who, nonetheless, are ten times faster with only keyboard shortcuts than you and me are with a mouse? How are they supposed to move a mouse cursor over an image without a mouse?
This is something that many Mastodon users don't know:- Not all Fediverse frontends have an "Alt" button.
- "Alt" buttons make no sense in the non-Mastodon Fediverse. In the non-Mastodon Fediverse, the character limits are so high that nobody has to use alt-texts to write around them. Expanding the character limit with alt-texts is a 100% Mastodon-only thing that simply doesn't translate to places with thousands or millions of characters and never will.
- There are other disabilities out there than visual impairments and neurodivergence. Even in the Fediverse.
- Not everyone in the Fediverse uses a pointing device of whichever sorts.
Oh, and there's one more thing: Misskey and its various forks (Sharkey, Iceshrimp-JS, CherryPick etc.) all have a character limit of 512 for alt-texts. They should enforce it the same way as Mastodon enforces its 1,500-character limit for alt-texts, namely by truncating longer alt-texts. This is bad enough already.
However, they all have the same nasty bug that still hasn't been fixed yet AFAIK: Instead of truncating longer alt-texts, they delete them. So if you describe your image in an alt-text of more than 512 characters, users on Misskey, Sharkey & Co. will never know that your image is supposed to have an alt-text. Instead, they may think that you were too lazy to describe your image. And if you use the alt-text to explain your image in over 512 characters, this explanation will never reach users on Misskey, Sharkey & Co.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #i3 #i3wm #Disability #A11y #Accessibility -
@Fluse The two channels that I have for posting images have no reach whatsoever anyway. Describing the images won't change that.
Still, I put more time and effort into describing (and explaining) my images than anyone else.
#AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta -
@Fluse The two channels that I have for posting images have no reach whatsoever anyway. Describing the images won't change that.
Still, I put more time and effort into describing (and explaining) my images than anyone else.
#AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta -
@Fluse The two channels that I have for posting images have no reach whatsoever anyway. Describing the images won't change that.
Still, I put more time and effort into describing (and explaining) my images than anyone else.
#AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta -
@Fluse The two channels that I have for posting images have no reach whatsoever anyway. Describing the images won't change that.
Still, I put more time and effort into describing (and explaining) my images than anyone else.
#AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta -
[image description]
A cartoon by Cathy Wilcox.
In the foreground is Penny Wong, speaking at a podium.
"We call in the Israeli government not to treat the Samud flotilla activists the way they treat Palestinians"The background shows two photos, one of the activists from the flotilla, kneeling with their heads down while the vessel was being boarded by Israeli forces. The second photo is of Palestinian people imprisoned and trapped in a razorwire covered cage.
-
[image description]
A cartoon by Cathy Wilcox.
In the foreground is Penny Wong, speaking at a podium.
"We call in the Israeli government not to treat the Samud flotilla activists the way they treat Palestinians"The background shows two photos, one of the activists from the flotilla, kneeling with their heads down while the vessel was being boarded by Israeli forces. The second photo is of Palestinian people imprisoned and trapped in a razorwire covered cage.
-
[image description]
A cartoon by Cathy Wilcox.
In the foreground is Penny Wong, speaking at a podium.
"We call in the Israeli government not to treat the Samud flotilla activists the way they treat Palestinians"The background shows two photos, one of the activists from the flotilla, kneeling with their heads down while the vessel was being boarded by Israeli forces. The second photo is of Palestinian people imprisoned and trapped in a razorwire covered cage.
-
[image description]
A cartoon by Cathy Wilcox.
In the foreground is Penny Wong, speaking at a podium.
"We call in the Israeli government not to treat the Samud flotilla activists the way they treat Palestinians"The background shows two photos, one of the activists from the flotilla, kneeling with their heads down while the vessel was being boarded by Israeli forces. The second photo is of Palestinian people imprisoned and trapped in a razorwire covered cage.
-
[image description]
A cartoon by Cathy Wilcox.
In the foreground is Penny Wong, speaking at a podium.
"We call in the Israeli government not to treat the Samud flotilla activists the way they treat Palestinians"The background shows two photos, one of the activists from the flotilla, kneeling with their heads down while the vessel was being boarded by Israeli forces. The second photo is of Palestinian people imprisoned and trapped in a razorwire covered cage.
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@DopeGhoti @Andrew How many characters would be sufficient for Mastodon to not count as ableist anymore?
If you say, 1,500, who or what says that 1,500 characters are sufficient to describe any and all images, but a lower limit is not?
For comparison, look at my cover photo. The one with the weird building. I have a post with just about the same image in it; here's the link.
In this post, the image has two separate image descriptions. One is in the alt-text. The alt-text is exactly 1,500 characters long, a bit over 1,400 of which are image description. And that's the short description. It doesn't even have room for any text transcripts. It actually isn't much more than an "alibi description". It's only there because many people on Mastodon demand there be a 100% accurate and sufficiently detailed image description in the alt-text of each image in the Fediverse.
Only that "sufficiently detailed" isn't always possible even in 1,500 characters.
That's why there is an additional long description in the post text. It's sufficiently detailed, as in, fully detailed. An image like this requires a fully detailed description. It comes with transcripts of all bits of text within the borders of the image, and it comes with all explanations necessary to understand the image and the description. It's over 60,000 characters long.
Yes, over 60,000 characters in one post. Your character limit is 500. Mine is over 16 million.
Oh, and yes, it's guaranteed to be 100% hand-written. It took me two full days, morning to evening, to research for and write the long description with literally absolutely no help from any AI whatsoever. In fact, I've described details that no AI on the planet will ever be able to see in the image.
So ideally, all Fediverse server platforms should have two image description fields for each profile image, one being the alt-text behind the image, one being a long description next to the image. The latter should not have an arbitrarily-chosen character limit.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Ableist #Ableism #AbleismMeta #CWAbleismMeta -
@DopeGhoti @Andrew How many characters would be sufficient for Mastodon to not count as ableist anymore?
If you say, 1,500, who or what says that 1,500 characters are sufficient to describe any and all images, but a lower limit is not?
For comparison, look at my cover photo. The one with the weird building. I have a post with just about the same image in it; here's the link.
In this post, the image has two separate image descriptions. One is in the alt-text. The alt-text is exactly 1,500 characters long, a bit over 1,400 of which are image description. And that's the short description. It doesn't even have room for any text transcripts. It actually isn't much more than an "alibi description". It's only there because many people on Mastodon demand there be a 100% accurate and sufficiently detailed image description in the alt-text of each image in the Fediverse.
Only that "sufficiently detailed" isn't always possible even in 1,500 characters.
That's why there is an additional long description in the post text. It's sufficiently detailed, as in, fully detailed. An image like this requires a fully detailed description. It comes with transcripts of all bits of text within the borders of the image, and it comes with all explanations necessary to understand the image and the description. It's over 60,000 characters long.
Yes, over 60,000 characters in one post. Your character limit is 500. Mine is over 16 million.
Oh, and yes, it's guaranteed to be 100% hand-written. It took me two full days, morning to evening, to research for and write the long description with literally absolutely no help from any AI whatsoever. In fact, I've described details that no AI on the planet will ever be able to see in the image.
So ideally, all Fediverse server platforms should have two image description fields for each profile image, one being the alt-text behind the image, one being a long description next to the image. The latter should not have an arbitrarily-chosen character limit.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Ableist #Ableism #AbleismMeta #CWAbleismMeta -
CW: Good image descriptions require a much bigger effort than you may think; CW: long (over 5,300 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, character limit meta, content warning meta, hashtag meta, alt-text meta, image description meta, AI mentioned (AI-)
Image descriptions are important in the Fediverse, at least if your posts have a chance to reach Mastodon. But is it only about having image descriptions in general? Is it only about having image descriptions at all? Or is it about image description quality as well?
Blind or visually-impaired users say that anything is better than nothing. But seriously, the image file name as the alt-text is useless. So is a copy of the post text as the alt-text; at least one mobile app for Mastodon seems to do that automatically. So is some gibberish written into the alt-text, just so that there's some alt-text.
So you write a short image description for your alt-text. That should be much better than nothing.
But then you're criticised and sanctioned because your image description lacks detail.
Since you can't or don't want to write a longer description, you leave that to an AI.
But then you're criticised and sanctioned because your image description is obvious AI slop. The AI is inaccurate, it hallucinates, it misidentifies things and it still leaves out details.
Okay, so you sit down and put quite some time and effort into a hand-written image description that's both accurate and detailed. At least you think so.
And still, someone may come and criticise and/or sanction you for having left out certain details.
If you don't fix your image description to their satisfaction, you're insulted as ableist and blocked very publicly so that as many other users as possible block you, too.
Now, minimum quality standards for image descriptions are evolving over time. What matters now didn't necessarily matter two years ago. Things that don't matter now may matter in two years or in five years. Even today, alt-text activists criticise image posts that are several years old for image descriptions that they consider less than optimal. This means the image descriptions that you write today must be good enough for as long as your image posts stay available. If they aren't, have fun going through all your old image posts, editing them and upgrading the image descriptions to the latest minimum requirements.
There's only way to be safe from Mastodon's alt-text police in the long run: First of all, you must educate yourself about all the rules and guidelines of alt-texts and image descriptions, and there are dozens of websites about these. You can't know beforehand which ones of these rules will be declared mandatory by someone from the alt-text police in the future, so you'd better follow them to a tee already now. Of course, when two rules contradict each other, you must know which one to follow.
Also, you must know that the requirements and quality standards for good alt-texts and image descriptions on Mastodon are different from the entire rest of the Web. What's good enough for the Web isn't necessarily good enough for Mastodon.
Lastly, you must know your audience. And normally, your audience can be anyone anywhere in the Fediverse or even on the Web. There are only very few places in the Fediverse where you can control who will be able to read your stuff, and Mastodon isn't one of them. You must know your audience, and you must at least be able to estimate what they know about the contents of your image, what they don't know and what they need to know. If your audience doesn't necessarily know what something is, explain it, but please do so in the post text and not in the alt-text! If your audience doesn't necessarily know what something looks like, but it may want to know, describe what it looks like.
As for my own images, my strategy is to write two image descriptions for each image. One is the short image description; it goes into the alt-text. I'm going to limit that to a maximum of 512 characters because Misskey and its forks delete alt-texts that are over 512 characters long. The other one is the long image description; it goes into the post text. The long image description is fully detailed, it contains all explanations necessary to understand the image and its descriptions, and it contains transcripts of every last bit of text anywhere within the borders of the image, readable in the image or not.
Posting memes is a bit easier. There is only one image description that's hopefully short enough to go into the alt-text. But I still need to explain a whole lot of things, and as I can't always rely upon links to websites like KnowYourMeme for explanations, I often have to write a whole lot of explanations into the post.
Ideally, the worst that could happen to me is being criticised for my alt-text exceeding 200 characters or my post exceeding 500 characters or being blocked for the latter. I reduce the chance for that to happen with a summary that includes a long post content warning with the rough length of the post and the hashtags #Long, #LongPost, #CWLong and #CWLongPost that can be filtered. I almost always add hashtags for folks to filter.
But I hope that nobody can say I haven't tried hard enough.
#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta -
CW: Good image descriptions require a much bigger effort than you may think; CW: long (over 5,300 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, character limit meta, content warning meta, hashtag meta, alt-text meta, image description meta, AI mentioned (AI-)
Image descriptions are important in the Fediverse, at least if your posts have a chance to reach Mastodon. But is it only about having image descriptions in general? Is it only about having image descriptions at all? Or is it about image description quality as well?
Blind or visually-impaired users say that anything is better than nothing. But seriously, the image file name as the alt-text is useless. So is a copy of the post text as the alt-text; at least one mobile app for Mastodon seems to do that automatically. So is some gibberish written into the alt-text, just so that there's some alt-text.
So you write a short image description for your alt-text. That should be much better than nothing.
But then you're criticised and sanctioned because your image description lacks detail.
Since you can't or don't want to write a longer description, you leave that to an AI.
But then you're criticised and sanctioned because your image description is obvious AI slop. The AI is inaccurate, it hallucinates, it misidentifies things and it still leaves out details.
Okay, so you sit down and put quite some time and effort into a hand-written image description that's both accurate and detailed. At least you think so.
And still, someone may come and criticise and/or sanction you for having left out certain details.
If you don't fix your image description to their satisfaction, you're insulted as ableist and blocked very publicly so that as many other users as possible block you, too.
Now, minimum quality standards for image descriptions are evolving over time. What matters now didn't necessarily matter two years ago. Things that don't matter now may matter in two years or in five years. Even today, alt-text activists criticise image posts that are several years old for image descriptions that they consider less than optimal. This means the image descriptions that you write today must be good enough for as long as your image posts stay available. If they aren't, have fun going through all your old image posts, editing them and upgrading the image descriptions to the latest minimum requirements.
There's only way to be safe from Mastodon's alt-text police in the long run: First of all, you must educate yourself about all the rules and guidelines of alt-texts and image descriptions, and there are dozens of websites about these. You can't know beforehand which ones of these rules will be declared mandatory by someone from the alt-text police in the future, so you'd better follow them to a tee already now. Of course, when two rules contradict each other, you must know which one to follow.
Also, you must know that the requirements and quality standards for good alt-texts and image descriptions on Mastodon are different from the entire rest of the Web. What's good enough for the Web isn't necessarily good enough for Mastodon.
Lastly, you must know your audience. And normally, your audience can be anyone anywhere in the Fediverse or even on the Web. There are only very few places in the Fediverse where you can control who will be able to read your stuff, and Mastodon isn't one of them. You must know your audience, and you must at least be able to estimate what they know about the contents of your image, what they don't know and what they need to know. If your audience doesn't necessarily know what something is, explain it, but please do so in the post text and not in the alt-text! If your audience doesn't necessarily know what something looks like, but it may want to know, describe what it looks like.
As for my own images, my strategy is to write two image descriptions for each image. One is the short image description; it goes into the alt-text. I'm going to limit that to a maximum of 512 characters because Misskey and its forks delete alt-texts that are over 512 characters long. The other one is the long image description; it goes into the post text. The long image description is fully detailed, it contains all explanations necessary to understand the image and its descriptions, and it contains transcripts of every last bit of text anywhere within the borders of the image, readable in the image or not.
Posting memes is a bit easier. There is only one image description that's hopefully short enough to go into the alt-text. But I still need to explain a whole lot of things, and as I can't always rely upon links to websites like KnowYourMeme for explanations, I often have to write a whole lot of explanations into the post.
Ideally, the worst that could happen to me is being criticised for my alt-text exceeding 200 characters or my post exceeding 500 characters or being blocked for the latter. I reduce the chance for that to happen with a summary that includes a long post content warning with the rough length of the post and the hashtags #Long, #LongPost, #CWLong and #CWLongPost that can be filtered. I almost always add hashtags for folks to filter.
But I hope that nobody can say I haven't tried hard enough.
#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta -
CW: Good image descriptions require a much bigger effort than you may think; CW: long (over 5,300 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, character limit meta, content warning meta, hashtag meta, alt-text meta, image description meta, AI mentioned (AI-)
Image descriptions are important in the Fediverse, at least if your posts have a chance to reach Mastodon. But is it only about having image descriptions in general? Is it only about having image descriptions at all? Or is it about image description quality as well?
Blind or visually-impaired users say that anything is better than nothing. But seriously, the image file name as the alt-text is useless. So is a copy of the post text as the alt-text; at least one mobile app for Mastodon seems to do that automatically. So is some gibberish written into the alt-text, just so that there's some alt-text.
So you write a short image description for your alt-text. That should be much better than nothing.
But then you're criticised and sanctioned because your image description lacks detail.
Since you can't or don't want to write a longer description, you leave that to an AI.
But then you're criticised and sanctioned because your image description is obvious AI slop. The AI is inaccurate, it hallucinates, it misidentifies things and it still leaves out details.
Okay, so you sit down and put quite some time and effort into a hand-written image description that's both accurate and detailed. At least you think so.
And still, someone may come and criticise and/or sanction you for having left out certain details.
If you don't fix your image description to their satisfaction, you're insulted as ableist and blocked very publicly so that as many other users as possible block you, too.
Now, minimum quality standards for image descriptions are evolving over time. What matters now didn't necessarily matter two years ago. Things that don't matter now may matter in two years or in five years. Even today, alt-text activists criticise image posts that are several years old for image descriptions that they consider less than optimal. This means the image descriptions that you write today must be good enough for as long as your image posts stay available. If they aren't, have fun going through all your old image posts, editing them and upgrading the image descriptions to the latest minimum requirements.
There's only way to be safe from Mastodon's alt-text police in the long run: First of all, you must educate yourself about all the rules and guidelines of alt-texts and image descriptions, and there are dozens of websites about these. You can't know beforehand which ones of these rules will be declared mandatory by someone from the alt-text police in the future, so you'd better follow them to a tee already now. Of course, when two rules contradict each other, you must know which one to follow.
Also, you must know that the requirements and quality standards for good alt-texts and image descriptions on Mastodon are different from the entire rest of the Web. What's good enough for the Web isn't necessarily good enough for Mastodon.
Lastly, you must know your audience. And normally, your audience can be anyone anywhere in the Fediverse or even on the Web. There are only very few places in the Fediverse where you can control who will be able to read your stuff, and Mastodon isn't one of them. You must know your audience, and you must at least be able to estimate what they know about the contents of your image, what they don't know and what they need to know. If your audience doesn't necessarily know what something is, explain it, but please do so in the post text and not in the alt-text! If your audience doesn't necessarily know what something looks like, but it may want to know, describe what it looks like.
As for my own images, my strategy is to write two image descriptions for each image. One is the short image description; it goes into the alt-text. I'm going to limit that to a maximum of 512 characters because Misskey and its forks delete alt-texts that are over 512 characters long. The other one is the long image description; it goes into the post text. The long image description is fully detailed, it contains all explanations necessary to understand the image and its descriptions, and it contains transcripts of every last bit of text anywhere within the borders of the image, readable in the image or not.
Posting memes is a bit easier. There is only one image description that's hopefully short enough to go into the alt-text. But I still need to explain a whole lot of things, and as I can't always rely upon links to websites like KnowYourMeme for explanations, I often have to write a whole lot of explanations into the post.
Ideally, the worst that could happen to me is being criticised for my alt-text exceeding 200 characters or my post exceeding 500 characters or being blocked for the latter. I reduce the chance for that to happen with a summary that includes a long post content warning with the rough length of the post and the hashtags #Long, #LongPost, #CWLong and #CWLongPost that can be filtered. I almost always add hashtags for folks to filter.
But I hope that nobody can say I haven't tried hard enough.
#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta -
CW: Good image descriptions require a much bigger effort than you may think; CW: long (over 5,300 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, character limit meta, content warning meta, hashtag meta, alt-text meta, image description meta, AI mentioned (AI-)
Image descriptions are important in the Fediverse, at least if your posts have a chance to reach Mastodon. But is it only about having image descriptions in general? Is it only about having image descriptions at all? Or is it about image description quality as well?
Blind or visually-impaired users say that anything is better than nothing. But seriously, the image file name as the alt-text is useless. So is a copy of the post text as the alt-text; at least one mobile app for Mastodon seems to do that automatically. So is some gibberish written into the alt-text, just so that there's some alt-text.
So you write a short image description for your alt-text. That should be much better than nothing.
But then you're criticised and sanctioned because your image description lacks detail.
Since you can't or don't want to write a longer description, you leave that to an AI.
But then you're criticised and sanctioned because your image description is obvious AI slop. The AI is inaccurate, it hallucinates, it misidentifies things and it still leaves out details.
Okay, so you sit down and put quite some time and effort into a hand-written image description that's both accurate and detailed. At least you think so.
And still, someone may come and criticise and/or sanction you for having left out certain details.
If you don't fix your image description to their satisfaction, you're insulted as ableist and blocked very publicly so that as many other users as possible block you, too.
Now, minimum quality standards for image descriptions are evolving over time. What matters now didn't necessarily matter two years ago. Things that don't matter now may matter in two years or in five years. Even today, alt-text activists criticise image posts that are several years old for image descriptions that they consider less than optimal. This means the image descriptions that you write today must be good enough for as long as your image posts stay available. If they aren't, have fun going through all your old image posts, editing them and upgrading the image descriptions to the latest minimum requirements.
There's only way to be safe from Mastodon's alt-text police in the long run: First of all, you must educate yourself about all the rules and guidelines of alt-texts and image descriptions, and there are dozens of websites about these. You can't know beforehand which ones of these rules will be declared mandatory by someone from the alt-text police in the future, so you'd better follow them to a tee already now. Of course, when two rules contradict each other, you must know which one to follow.
Also, you must know that the requirements and quality standards for good alt-texts and image descriptions on Mastodon are different from the entire rest of the Web. What's good enough for the Web isn't necessarily good enough for Mastodon.
Lastly, you must know your audience. And normally, your audience can be anyone anywhere in the Fediverse or even on the Web. There are only very few places in the Fediverse where you can control who will be able to read your stuff, and Mastodon isn't one of them. You must know your audience, and you must at least be able to estimate what they know about the contents of your image, what they don't know and what they need to know. If your audience doesn't necessarily know what something is, explain it, but please do so in the post text and not in the alt-text! If your audience doesn't necessarily know what something looks like, but it may want to know, describe what it looks like.
As for my own images, my strategy is to write two image descriptions for each image. One is the short image description; it goes into the alt-text. I'm going to limit that to a maximum of 512 characters because Misskey and its forks delete alt-texts that are over 512 characters long. The other one is the long image description; it goes into the post text. The long image description is fully detailed, it contains all explanations necessary to understand the image and its descriptions, and it contains transcripts of every last bit of text anywhere within the borders of the image, readable in the image or not.
Posting memes is a bit easier. There is only one image description that's hopefully short enough to go into the alt-text. But I still need to explain a whole lot of things, and as I can't always rely upon links to websites like KnowYourMeme for explanations, I often have to write a whole lot of explanations into the post.
Ideally, the worst that could happen to me is being criticised for my alt-text exceeding 200 characters or my post exceeding 500 characters or being blocked for the latter. I reduce the chance for that to happen with a summary that includes a long post content warning with the rough length of the post and the hashtags #Long, #LongPost, #CWLong and #CWLongPost that can be filtered. I almost always add hashtags for folks to filter.
But I hope that nobody can say I haven't tried hard enough.
#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta -
CW: Good image descriptions require a much bigger effort than you may think; CW: long (over 5,300 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, character limit meta, content warning meta, hashtag meta, alt-text meta, image description meta, AI mentioned (AI-)
Image descriptions are important in the Fediverse, at least if your posts have a chance to reach Mastodon. But is it only about having image descriptions in general? Is it only about having image descriptions at all? Or is it about image description quality as well?
Blind or visually-impaired users say that anything is better than nothing. But seriously, the image file name as the alt-text is useless. So is a copy of the post text as the alt-text; at least one mobile app for Mastodon seems to do that automatically. So is some gibberish written into the alt-text, just so that there's some alt-text.
So you write a short image description for your alt-text. That should be much better than nothing.
But then you're criticised and sanctioned because your image description lacks detail.
Since you can't or don't want to write a longer description, you leave that to an AI.
But then you're criticised and sanctioned because your image description is obvious AI slop. The AI is inaccurate, it hallucinates, it misidentifies things and it still leaves out details.
Okay, so you sit down and put quite some time and effort into a hand-written image description that's both accurate and detailed. At least you think so.
And still, someone may come and criticise and/or sanction you for having left out certain details.
If you don't fix your image description to their satisfaction, you're insulted as ableist and blocked very publicly so that as many other users as possible block you, too.
Now, minimum quality standards for image descriptions are evolving over time. What matters now didn't necessarily matter two years ago. Things that don't matter now may matter in two years or in five years. Even today, alt-text activists criticise image posts that are several years old for image descriptions that they consider less than optimal. This means the image descriptions that you write today must be good enough for as long as your image posts stay available. If they aren't, have fun going through all your old image posts, editing them and upgrading the image descriptions to the latest minimum requirements.
There's only way to be safe from Mastodon's alt-text police in the long run: First of all, you must educate yourself about all the rules and guidelines of alt-texts and image descriptions, and there are dozens of websites about these. You can't know beforehand which ones of these rules will be declared mandatory by someone from the alt-text police in the future, so you'd better follow them to a tee already now. Of course, when two rules contradict each other, you must know which one to follow.
Also, you must know that the requirements and quality standards for good alt-texts and image descriptions on Mastodon are different from the entire rest of the Web. What's good enough for the Web isn't necessarily good enough for Mastodon.
Lastly, you must know your audience. And normally, your audience can be anyone anywhere in the Fediverse or even on the Web. There are only very few places in the Fediverse where you can control who will be able to read your stuff, and Mastodon isn't one of them. You must know your audience, and you must at least be able to estimate what they know about the contents of your image, what they don't know and what they need to know. If your audience doesn't necessarily know what something is, explain it, but please do so in the post text and not in the alt-text! If your audience doesn't necessarily know what something looks like, but it may want to know, describe what it looks like.
As for my own images, my strategy is to write two image descriptions for each image. One is the short image description; it goes into the alt-text. I'm going to limit that to a maximum of 512 characters because Misskey and its forks delete alt-texts that are over 512 characters long. The other one is the long image description; it goes into the post text. The long image description is fully detailed, it contains all explanations necessary to understand the image and its descriptions, and it contains transcripts of every last bit of text anywhere within the borders of the image, readable in the image or not.
Posting memes is a bit easier. There is only one image description that's hopefully short enough to go into the alt-text. But I still need to explain a whole lot of things, and as I can't always rely upon links to websites like KnowYourMeme for explanations, I often have to write a whole lot of explanations into the post.
Ideally, the worst that could happen to me is being criticised for my alt-text exceeding 200 characters or my post exceeding 500 characters or being blocked for the latter. I reduce the chance for that to happen with a summary that includes a long post content warning with the rough length of the post and the hashtags #Long, #LongPost, #CWLong and #CWLongPost that can be filtered. I almost always add hashtags for folks to filter.
But I hope that nobody can say I haven't tried hard enough.
#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta -
@Roknrol Well, I'm kind of afraid of being sanctioned for alt-texts that lack text transcripts, even if the additional long image description in the post text contains them. I mean, the rule says that text must always be transcribed, and the transcripts must always go into the alt-text. That, and not everyone may want to wade through a long description of 20,000 to 60,000 characters to read the transcripts.
Also, I go as far as transcribing more than 20 individual bits of text within one image, only two of which are actually halfway readable at the given resolution. About a dozen of these bits of text can be found in an area that's five pixels tall and a dozen pixels wide in the image. The individual bits of text are so tiny at this resolution that they're invisible in the image. And yet, I transcribe them because, technically, they're still within the borders of the image.
But as long as you don't say I could and should try harder...
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Transcript #Transcripts -
@Roknrol Well, I'm kind of afraid of being sanctioned for alt-texts that lack text transcripts, even if the additional long image description in the post text contains them. I mean, the rule says that text must always be transcribed, and the transcripts must always go into the alt-text. That, and not everyone may want to wade through a long description of 20,000 to 60,000 characters to read the transcripts.
Also, I go as far as transcribing more than 20 individual bits of text within one image, only two of which are actually halfway readable at the given resolution. About a dozen of these bits of text can be found in an area that's five pixels tall and a dozen pixels wide in the image. The individual bits of text are so tiny at this resolution that they're invisible in the image. And yet, I transcribe them because, technically, they're still within the borders of the image.
But as long as you don't say I could and should try harder...
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Transcript #Transcripts -
@Roknrol Well, I'm kind of afraid of being sanctioned for alt-texts that lack text transcripts, even if the additional long image description in the post text contains them. I mean, the rule says that text must always be transcribed, and the transcripts must always go into the alt-text. That, and not everyone may want to wade through a long description of 20,000 to 60,000 characters to read the transcripts.
Also, I go as far as transcribing more than 20 individual bits of text within one image, only two of which are actually halfway readable at the given resolution. About a dozen of these bits of text can be found in an area that's five pixels tall and a dozen pixels wide in the image. The individual bits of text are so tiny at this resolution that they're invisible in the image. And yet, I transcribe them because, technically, they're still within the borders of the image.
But as long as you don't say I could and should try harder...
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Transcript #Transcripts -
@Roknrol Well, I'm kind of afraid of being sanctioned for alt-texts that lack text transcripts, even if the additional long image description in the post text contains them. I mean, the rule says that text must always be transcribed, and the transcripts must always go into the alt-text. That, and not everyone may want to wade through a long description of 20,000 to 60,000 characters to read the transcripts.
Also, I go as far as transcribing more than 20 individual bits of text within one image, only two of which are actually halfway readable at the given resolution. About a dozen of these bits of text can be found in an area that's five pixels tall and a dozen pixels wide in the image. The individual bits of text are so tiny at this resolution that they're invisible in the image. And yet, I transcribe them because, technically, they're still within the borders of the image.
But as long as you don't say I could and should try harder...
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Transcript #Transcripts -
@Roknrol Well, I'm kind of afraid of being sanctioned for alt-texts that lack text transcripts, even if the additional long image description in the post text contains them. I mean, the rule says that text must always be transcribed, and the transcripts must always go into the alt-text. That, and not everyone may want to wade through a long description of 20,000 to 60,000 characters to read the transcripts.
Also, I go as far as transcribing more than 20 individual bits of text within one image, only two of which are actually halfway readable at the given resolution. About a dozen of these bits of text can be found in an area that's five pixels tall and a dozen pixels wide in the image. The individual bits of text are so tiny at this resolution that they're invisible in the image. And yet, I transcribe them because, technically, they're still within the borders of the image.
But as long as you don't say I could and should try harder...
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Transcript #Transcripts -
@Roknrol I don't post social media app screenshots.
When I post memes, I only transcribe the pieces of text that are important within the context, but I do transcribe all of them.
I hope it's okay to leave out bits of text that don't matter in this case.
On the other hand, when I post original images, I transcribe every last bit of text within the borders of the image that I can read at the source, regardless of whether it's readable in the image at the resolution at which I'm going to post it.
I hope that's okay, too. And I hope it's okay that these transcripts only go into the long image description in the post text and not into the alt-text where there isn't enough space for them.
Also, I've yet to find a way to correctly transcribe things like text in other languages or text in multiple languages or misspellings, seeing as text must normally be transcribed 100% verbatim.
And I wonder if I can get away with deviating from transcribing 100% verbatim in the cases of all caps, misspellings, multiple paragraphs, quotation marks in the transcribed text and the like.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Transcript #Transcripts -
@Roknrol I don't post social media app screenshots.
When I post memes, I only transcribe the pieces of text that are important within the context, but I do transcribe all of them.
I hope it's okay to leave out bits of text that don't matter in this case.
On the other hand, when I post original images, I transcribe every last bit of text within the borders of the image that I can read at the source, regardless of whether it's readable in the image at the resolution at which I'm going to post it.
I hope that's okay, too. And I hope it's okay that these transcripts only go into the long image description in the post text and not into the alt-text where there isn't enough space for them.
Also, I've yet to find a way to correctly transcribe things like text in other languages or text in multiple languages or misspellings, seeing as text must normally be transcribed 100% verbatim.
And I wonder if I can get away with deviating from transcribing 100% verbatim in the cases of all caps, misspellings, multiple paragraphs, quotation marks in the transcribed text and the like.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Transcript #Transcripts -
@Roknrol I don't post social media app screenshots.
When I post memes, I only transcribe the pieces of text that are important within the context, but I do transcribe all of them.
I hope it's okay to leave out bits of text that don't matter in this case.
On the other hand, when I post original images, I transcribe every last bit of text within the borders of the image that I can read at the source, regardless of whether it's readable in the image at the resolution at which I'm going to post it.
I hope that's okay, too. And I hope it's okay that these transcripts only go into the long image description in the post text and not into the alt-text where there isn't enough space for them.
Also, I've yet to find a way to correctly transcribe things like text in other languages or text in multiple languages or misspellings, seeing as text must normally be transcribed 100% verbatim.
And I wonder if I can get away with deviating from transcribing 100% verbatim in the cases of all caps, misspellings, multiple paragraphs, quotation marks in the transcribed text and the like.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Transcript #Transcripts -
@Roknrol I don't post social media app screenshots.
When I post memes, I only transcribe the pieces of text that are important within the context, but I do transcribe all of them.
I hope it's okay to leave out bits of text that don't matter in this case.
On the other hand, when I post original images, I transcribe every last bit of text within the borders of the image that I can read at the source, regardless of whether it's readable in the image at the resolution at which I'm going to post it.
I hope that's okay, too. And I hope it's okay that these transcripts only go into the long image description in the post text and not into the alt-text where there isn't enough space for them.
Also, I've yet to find a way to correctly transcribe things like text in other languages or text in multiple languages or misspellings, seeing as text must normally be transcribed 100% verbatim.
And I wonder if I can get away with deviating from transcribing 100% verbatim in the cases of all caps, misspellings, multiple paragraphs, quotation marks in the transcribed text and the like.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Transcript #Transcripts -
@Roknrol I don't post social media app screenshots.
When I post memes, I only transcribe the pieces of text that are important within the context, but I do transcribe all of them.
I hope it's okay to leave out bits of text that don't matter in this case.
On the other hand, when I post original images, I transcribe every last bit of text within the borders of the image that I can read at the source, regardless of whether it's readable in the image at the resolution at which I'm going to post it.
I hope that's okay, too. And I hope it's okay that these transcripts only go into the long image description in the post text and not into the alt-text where there isn't enough space for them.
Also, I've yet to find a way to correctly transcribe things like text in other languages or text in multiple languages or misspellings, seeing as text must normally be transcribed 100% verbatim.
And I wonder if I can get away with deviating from transcribing 100% verbatim in the cases of all caps, misspellings, multiple paragraphs, quotation marks in the transcribed text and the like.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Transcript #Transcripts -
@Jecture I'm already taking tons of things into consideration when writing descriptions for my images, especially my original images.
Avoiding line breaks and keyboard double quotes in alt-text. Not exceeding 512 characters in alt-text because Misskey and its forks will automatically delete alt-texts longer than that (only from my newest image posts on).
How to describe positions. Shapes. Dimensions. Colours. People (in my case, 3-D avatars). Their gender. Their shape. Their skin tones. Their outfits.
Which texts to transcribe (in my case, literally every bit of text anywhere within the borders of the image). How to transcribe multiple-paragraph texts. Acronyms. All caps. Misspellings. Text in different or multiple languages (I'm still not sure how to do that in a way that neither clashes with "text must always be transcribed 100% verbatim" nor with "screen readers must be able to handle the transcript properly").
My audience (not my target audience, but whom I have to expect to be my actual audience). What they know about the topic that my images show (usually nothing). What they may want to know. How easy it'd be for them to obtain that information without my help (not at all).
Where I post my images. Where people will or may see my image posts. The cultural differences between the Fediverse and a) corporate social networks/media as well as b) "non-social" websites and blogs. The technological differences, e.g. character limits, their limitations or lack thereof and their cultural implications. Even technological differences within the Fediverse because I post my images somewhere that's very very different from Mastodon.
I'm working with over 50 different references for writing alt-texts and image descriptions; here's the list including links.
It takes me from hours to days to describe and explain one image, also because each one of my original images requires two image descriptions.
I'm actually working on gathering everything I know about alt-texts and image descriptions in the Fediverse in a wiki.
And yet, I've got the feeling that this event, if I were able to attend it, would render things even more complex for me and every single one of my previous image posts even more embarrassingly outdated than they already are.
I've got the image descriptions for a series of avatar portraits as works in progress since late 2024. With the extra knowledge from this event, I might have to largely rewrite them yet again and put even more work into them than I already did.
That is, on the other hand, I've got a feeling that "tackling social media" won't even touch the Fediverse. Or only Mastodon as if the Fediverse wasn't more than that.
No advice on how to describe images if your post ends up someplace where good, manually written, accurate, sufficiently detailed image descriptions are mandatory, and you're basically expected to flesh out the character limit of 1,500 per alt-text while only having 500 for the post itself. But if, at the same time, the place where you actually compose and post your image posts, does not have any character limits to worry about, so you do have the technical means to put a full, long, detailed extra image description into the post itself.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta -
@Jecture I'm already taking tons of things into consideration when writing descriptions for my images, especially my original images.
Avoiding line breaks and keyboard double quotes in alt-text. Not exceeding 512 characters in alt-text because Misskey and its forks will automatically delete alt-texts longer than that (only from my newest image posts on).
How to describe positions. Shapes. Dimensions. Colours. People (in my case, 3-D avatars). Their gender. Their shape. Their skin tones. Their outfits.
Which texts to transcribe (in my case, literally every bit of text anywhere within the borders of the image). How to transcribe multiple-paragraph texts. Acronyms. All caps. Misspellings. Text in different or multiple languages (I'm still not sure how to do that in a way that neither clashes with "text must always be transcribed 100% verbatim" nor with "screen readers must be able to handle the transcript properly").
My audience (not my target audience, but whom I have to expect to be my actual audience). What they know about the topic that my images show (usually nothing). What they may want to know. How easy it'd be for them to obtain that information without my help (not at all).
Where I post my images. Where people will or may see my image posts. The cultural differences between the Fediverse and a) corporate social networks/media as well as b) "non-social" websites and blogs. The technological differences, e.g. character limits, their limitations or lack thereof and their cultural implications. Even technological differences within the Fediverse because I post my images somewhere that's very very different from Mastodon.
I'm working with over 50 different references for writing alt-texts and image descriptions; here's the list including links.
It takes me from hours to days to describe and explain one image, also because each one of my original images requires two image descriptions.
I'm actually working on gathering everything I know about alt-texts and image descriptions in the Fediverse in a wiki.
And yet, I've got the feeling that this event, if I were able to attend it, would render things even more complex for me and every single one of my previous image posts even more embarrassingly outdated than they already are.
I've got the image descriptions for a series of avatar portraits as works in progress since late 2024. With the extra knowledge from this event, I might have to largely rewrite them yet again and put even more work into them than I already did.
That is, on the other hand, I've got a feeling that "tackling social media" won't even touch the Fediverse. Or only Mastodon as if the Fediverse wasn't more than that.
No advice on how to describe images if your post ends up someplace where good, manually written, accurate, sufficiently detailed image descriptions are mandatory, and you're basically expected to flesh out the character limit of 1,500 per alt-text while only having 500 for the post itself. But if, at the same time, the place where you actually compose and post your image posts, does not have any character limits to worry about, so you do have the technical means to put a full, long, detailed extra image description into the post itself.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta -
Every now and then I like to remind people that one way to respond to the lack of alt text on images on here is to politely suggest text that can be copied.
You never know if the person posting the image is dealing with physical or other challenges preventing them from writing the alt text. And some apps make this harder than others.
One response to this that came up once or twice has been: then people will just be lazy and never do it themselves.
Well, back to my first point, it may not just be laziness.
But even then, so what? You'd be doing it for the people who rely on image descriptions, not them.
-
Every now and then I like to remind people that one way to respond to the lack of alt text on images on here is to politely suggest text that can be copied.
You never know if the person posting the image is dealing with physical or other challenges preventing them from writing the alt text. And some apps make this harder than others.
One response to this that came up once or twice has been: then people will just be lazy and never do it themselves.
Well, back to my first point, it may not just be laziness.
But even then, so what? You'd be doing it for the people who rely on image descriptions, not them.
-
Every now and then I like to remind people that one way to respond to the lack of alt text on images on here is to politely suggest text that can be copied.
You never know if the person posting the image is dealing with physical or other challenges preventing them from writing the alt text. And some apps make this harder than others.
One response to this that came up once or twice has been: then people will just be lazy and never do it themselves.
Well, back to my first point, it may not just be laziness.
But even then, so what? You'd be doing it for the people who rely on image descriptions, not them.
-
Every now and then I like to remind people that one way to respond to the lack of alt text on images on here is to politely suggest text that can be copied.
You never know if the person posting the image is dealing with physical or other challenges preventing them from writing the alt text. And some apps make this harder than others.
One response to this that came up once or twice has been: then people will just be lazy and never do it themselves.
Well, back to my first point, it may not just be laziness.
But even then, so what? You'd be doing it for the people who rely on image descriptions, not them.
-
Every now and then I like to remind people that one way to respond to the lack of alt text on images on here is to politely suggest text that can be copied.
You never know if the person posting the image is dealing with physical or other challenges preventing them from writing the alt text. And some apps make this harder than others.
One response to this that came up once or twice has been: then people will just be lazy and never do it themselves.
Well, back to my first point, it may not just be laziness.
But even then, so what? You'd be doing it for the people who rely on image descriptions, not them.
-
@Scott Jenson @Stefan Bohacek @Rosy This even raises quite a few questions.
When are you "doing it wrong"? What is the point at which you'll stop "doing it wrong"? What are the minimum requirements for, quote @Rosy, "good alt text"?
If you think you have the definite, all-encompassing answer, have you ever talked about it with someone, preferably with an alt-text activist? Because I'm pretty certain that their minimum requirements for "good alt text" and not "doing it wrong" are different from yours. Ask someone else, and their minimum requirements are different yet again.
Still, no matter how they define the minimum for "good alt text" and not "doing it wrong", you'll have to fulfill that to keep your dignity and your reputation, not to mention your reach.
This is why I try to play by all the rules when describing images. This is why I carefully choose between rules that contradict each other. This is why I take such a lot of things into consideration whenever I describe an image.
This, in fact, is why I haven't posted an actually original image in almost two years because the effort is so enormous.
And this is why I'm actually working on a wiki about alt-texts and image descriptions in the Fediverse. It'll have over 50 pages, and it uses more than 50 references all over the Web already now.
Now, what if I told you that you can even be lectured or sanctioned or insulted or blocked outright for not having good enough alt-text behind an image that you've posted several years ago? And that my images aren't auto-purged after a certain time?
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta -
@Stefan Bohacek @Blorbo Admin Chicken Yes, I wish more servers had this rule and enforced it.
Officially appointed moderators only go by the server's written rules, and they only enforce them against local users.
The HOA, on the other hand, have some rules in their heads. Everyone has different rules. And they enforce them against everyone, even regardless of where everyone actually is. Like, they attack Friendica users for allegedly misusing the CW field because they neither know that these users are not on Mastodon, much less where they actually are, nor that Mastodon's CW field has been an abstract field on Friendica for seven years longer than it has been a CW field on Mastodon.
This is part of what makes the Fediverse a minefield once your messages start reaching Mastodon.
I can't say that I'll stop being so overly careful with everything and putting such a big effort particulary into image descriptions, summaries/content warnings and hashtags for filter-triggering purposes if more or even most Mastodon servers adopt and enforce this rule. The irony is that this rule actually protects my long hashtag lines.
In fact, rules like these also ought to include that nobody must be policed for writing "too long" posts because there are places in the Fediverse that neither have character limits to worry about nor a character-limiting culture.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta -
@Stefan Bohacek @Blorbo Admin Chicken Yes, I wish more servers had this rule and enforced it.
Officially appointed moderators only go by the server's written rules, and they only enforce them against local users.
The HOA, on the other hand, have some rules in their heads. Everyone has different rules. And they enforce them against everyone, even regardless of where everyone actually is. Like, they attack Friendica users for allegedly misusing the CW field because they neither know that these users are not on Mastodon, much less where they actually are, nor that Mastodon's CW field has been an abstract field on Friendica for seven years longer than it has been a CW field on Mastodon.
This is part of what makes the Fediverse a minefield once your messages start reaching Mastodon.
I can't say that I'll stop being so overly careful with everything and putting such a big effort particulary into image descriptions, summaries/content warnings and hashtags for filter-triggering purposes if more or even most Mastodon servers adopt and enforce this rule. The irony is that this rule actually protects my long hashtag lines.
In fact, rules like these also ought to include that nobody must be policed for writing "too long" posts because there are places in the Fediverse that neither have character limits to worry about nor a character-limiting culture.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta -
@Stefan Bohacek @Blorbo Admin Chicken Yes, I wish more servers had this rule and enforced it.
Officially appointed moderators only go by the server's written rules, and they only enforce them against local users.
The HOA, on the other hand, have some rules in their heads. Everyone has different rules. And they enforce them against everyone, even regardless of where everyone actually is. Like, they attack Friendica users for allegedly misusing the CW field because they neither know that these users are not on Mastodon, much less where they actually are, nor that Mastodon's CW field has been an abstract field on Friendica for seven years longer than it has been a CW field on Mastodon.
This is part of what makes the Fediverse a minefield once your messages start reaching Mastodon.
I can't say that I'll stop being so overly careful with everything and putting such a big effort particulary into image descriptions, summaries/content warnings and hashtags for filter-triggering purposes if more or even most Mastodon servers adopt and enforce this rule. The irony is that this rule actually protects my long hashtag lines.
In fact, rules like these also ought to include that nobody must be policed for writing "too long" posts because there are places in the Fediverse that neither have character limits to worry about nor a character-limiting culture.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta -
@Stefan Bohacek @Blorbo Admin Chicken Yes, I wish more servers had this rule and enforced it.
Officially appointed moderators only go by the server's written rules, and they only enforce them against local users.
The HOA, on the other hand, have some rules in their heads. Everyone has different rules. And they enforce them against everyone, even regardless of where everyone actually is. Like, they attack Friendica users for allegedly misusing the CW field because they neither know that these users are not on Mastodon, much less where they actually are, nor that Mastodon's CW field has been an abstract field on Friendica for seven years longer than it has been a CW field on Mastodon.
This is part of what makes the Fediverse a minefield once your messages start reaching Mastodon.
I can't say that I'll stop being so overly careful with everything and putting such a big effort particulary into image descriptions, summaries/content warnings and hashtags for filter-triggering purposes if more or even most Mastodon servers adopt and enforce this rule. The irony is that this rule actually protects my long hashtag lines.
In fact, rules like these also ought to include that nobody must be policed for writing "too long" posts because there are places in the Fediverse that neither have character limits to worry about nor a character-limiting culture.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta -
@Stefan Bohacek @Blorbo Admin Chicken Yes, I wish more servers had this rule and enforced it.
Officially appointed moderators only go by the server's written rules, and they only enforce them against local users.
The HOA, on the other hand, have some rules in their heads. Everyone has different rules. And they enforce them against everyone, even regardless of where everyone actually is. Like, they attack Friendica users for allegedly misusing the CW field because they neither know that these users are not on Mastodon, much less where they actually are, nor that Mastodon's CW field has been an abstract field on Friendica for seven years longer than it has been a CW field on Mastodon.
This is part of what makes the Fediverse a minefield once your messages start reaching Mastodon.
I can't say that I'll stop being so overly careful with everything and putting such a big effort particulary into image descriptions, summaries/content warnings and hashtags for filter-triggering purposes if more or even most Mastodon servers adopt and enforce this rule. The irony is that this rule actually protects my long hashtag lines.
In fact, rules like these also ought to include that nobody must be policed for writing "too long" posts because there are places in the Fediverse that neither have character limits to worry about nor a character-limiting culture.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta -
@Sam 🐛 @Robert Kingett It'd be a lot easier if the fully sighted alt-text enforcers on Mastodon had the same standards for good image descriptions as the blind or visually-impaired users. And their standards usually aren't tremendously high.
But they go by their own standards. They don't even all have the same standards because they don't talk to each other. At least some of them keep raising their standards. One of their sources for what makes good image descriptions is, no, not the W3C, but Mastodon itself. Mastodon where alt-texts of well over 1,000 characters are cheered for. And you never know who of them discovers which of the many alt-text guides out there as their new reference.
Worse yet: They don't just sanction "sub-standard" new image descriptions. They may just as well sanction "sub-standard" image descriptions in posts that are several years old already.
At the end of the day, the only way for us to survive is by taking all these guides into consideration, try hard to comply with them all and overcomply with these people's standards so that our image descriptions are still good enough in four, five or more years. Where I am, images aren't generally automatically purged after a year or a few, neither are posts, so a many-years-old post with an image description that's less than optimal by today's standards, whatever these may be, may always come back to bite you.
The alternative would be to go around and update all your image descriptions whenever you find that someone has some minimum quality requirements that your image descriptions don't fulfill. And that's tedious and may send your edited posts around anew even if they themselves are outdated by topic.
As someone who posts images, you have the choice. Either you go to extremes, and you make sure that your image descriptions are good enough by anyone's standards and will be for as long as they remain available in the Fediverse. Or you end up being attacked, insulted, ostracised and blocked for not having tried hard enough.
And seriously, those who regularly lecture people who post images about the importance of alt-texts or even attack anyone who doesn't supply good enough alt-texts, I've never seen any of them do the same when someone has written a too long alt-text or a too detailed image description. Not even once.
Yes, extremely long image descriptions are rather inconvenient for those who actually need them due to disabilities. But it isn't their wrath that you have to fear. And if I knew how to fully cater to everyone's needs all the same, you can believe me I'd tell you how, not to mention try my hardest to do just that myself. It's just that that's impossible.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta -
@Sam 🐛 @Robert Kingett It'd be a lot easier if the fully sighted alt-text enforcers on Mastodon had the same standards for good image descriptions as the blind or visually-impaired users. And their standards usually aren't tremendously high.
But they go by their own standards. They don't even all have the same standards because they don't talk to each other. At least some of them keep raising their standards. One of their sources for what makes good image descriptions is, no, not the W3C, but Mastodon itself. Mastodon where alt-texts of well over 1,000 characters are cheered for. And you never know who of them discovers which of the many alt-text guides out there as their new reference.
Worse yet: They don't just sanction "sub-standard" new image descriptions. They may just as well sanction "sub-standard" image descriptions in posts that are several years old already.
At the end of the day, the only way for us to survive is by taking all these guides into consideration, try hard to comply with them all and overcomply with these people's standards so that our image descriptions are still good enough in four, five or more years. Where I am, images aren't generally automatically purged after a year or a few, neither are posts, so a many-years-old post with an image description that's less than optimal by today's standards, whatever these may be, may always come back to bite you.
The alternative would be to go around and update all your image descriptions whenever you find that someone has some minimum quality requirements that your image descriptions don't fulfill. And that's tedious and may send your edited posts around anew even if they themselves are outdated by topic.
As someone who posts images, you have the choice. Either you go to extremes, and you make sure that your image descriptions are good enough by anyone's standards and will be for as long as they remain available in the Fediverse. Or you end up being attacked, insulted, ostracised and blocked for not having tried hard enough.
And seriously, those who regularly lecture people who post images about the importance of alt-texts or even attack anyone who doesn't supply good enough alt-texts, I've never seen any of them do the same when someone has written a too long alt-text or a too detailed image description. Not even once.
Yes, extremely long image descriptions are rather inconvenient for those who actually need them due to disabilities. But it isn't their wrath that you have to fear. And if I knew how to fully cater to everyone's needs all the same, you can believe me I'd tell you how, not to mention try my hardest to do just that myself. It's just that that's impossible.
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@Sam 🐛 @Robert Kingett It'd be a lot easier if the fully sighted alt-text enforcers on Mastodon had the same standards for good image descriptions as the blind or visually-impaired users. And their standards usually aren't tremendously high.
But they go by their own standards. They don't even all have the same standards because they don't talk to each other. At least some of them keep raising their standards. One of their sources for what makes good image descriptions is, no, not the W3C, but Mastodon itself. Mastodon where alt-texts of well over 1,000 characters are cheered for. And you never know who of them discovers which of the many alt-text guides out there as their new reference.
Worse yet: They don't just sanction "sub-standard" new image descriptions. They may just as well sanction "sub-standard" image descriptions in posts that are several years old already.
At the end of the day, the only way for us to survive is by taking all these guides into consideration, try hard to comply with them all and overcomply with these people's standards so that our image descriptions are still good enough in four, five or more years. Where I am, images aren't generally automatically purged after a year or a few, neither are posts, so a many-years-old post with an image description that's less than optimal by today's standards, whatever these may be, may always come back to bite you.
The alternative would be to go around and update all your image descriptions whenever you find that someone has some minimum quality requirements that your image descriptions don't fulfill. And that's tedious and may send your edited posts around anew even if they themselves are outdated by topic.
As someone who posts images, you have the choice. Either you go to extremes, and you make sure that your image descriptions are good enough by anyone's standards and will be for as long as they remain available in the Fediverse. Or you end up being attacked, insulted, ostracised and blocked for not having tried hard enough.
And seriously, those who regularly lecture people who post images about the importance of alt-texts or even attack anyone who doesn't supply good enough alt-texts, I've never seen any of them do the same when someone has written a too long alt-text or a too detailed image description. Not even once.
Yes, extremely long image descriptions are rather inconvenient for those who actually need them due to disabilities. But it isn't their wrath that you have to fear. And if I knew how to fully cater to everyone's needs all the same, you can believe me I'd tell you how, not to mention try my hardest to do just that myself. It's just that that's impossible.
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@Cassian [main] This matches my observation here in the Fediverse.
Blind or visually-impaired users, those who actually need image descriptions, are happy to have alt-texts or image descriptions at all. Their requirements don't go much beyond that. And they don't personally attack or sanction anyone.
And then there's the alt-text police of Mastodon's HOA. They're sighted, all of them. It's them who attack, ostracise, sanction, block and sometimes even report other users. For missing alt-text, for completely useless alt-text, for inaccurate alt-text, even for alt-text that isn't detailed enough. For whichever definition of "detailed enough" because the alt-text police don't coordinate their standards. They literally don't talk to each other, so they all assume they all think alike.
In addition, the alt-text police know nothing about the actual rules and guidelines for good alt-texts and image descriptions. Everything they know, they know from Mastodon's culture and from what's going on on Mastodon. And thanks to Mastodon's culture, the Fediverse is a place where you can post an image with a detailed 1,000+-character alt-text and not only get away with it, but be cheered for it.
Never mind that users on Misskey and the Forkeys won't see alt-texts with over 512 characters due to a nasty bug. But tell that to users who don't even know that Misskey exists.
In order to save yourself and your reach in the Fediverse from the wrath of the alt-text police, you basically have to be constantly ahead of their minimum requirements which at least some of them appear to raise every now and then. This means you have to exceed their current minimum requirements to keep yourself from being sanctioned in four years for image descriptions that you've written today. You have to play by the book, and with that, I mean every book, because you never know who in the alt-text police goes by which alt-text guides.
That is, my current impression is that if an image shows something that's obscure enough, Fediverse users are obliged to deliver explanations as well. I understand that as enough explanations so that nobody will ever have to look anything up to understand the image or its description or any of the explanations.
I myself only rarely post images anymore, especially no original images. All my original images are renderings from very obscure 3-D virtual worlds. Images like these require a humongous amount of work to describe them in a way that keeps you safe from even the most zealous of the alt-text police.
I've once taken two full days, morning to evening, to describe one image. The outcome was an alt-text of exactly 1,500 characters plus an additional long description of over 60,000 characters in the post text that also contained all necessary explanations as well as transcripts of every last bit of text within the border of the image, readable or not.
Blind users with screen readers might proverbially be at my throat for their screen reader spending three hours rambling down the description of one measly image. But they probably won't attack or insult or block me for that. They may actually be thankful to have some description.
It's the sighted members of the alt-text police who attack or insult or block other users for less than optimal image descriptions. At the same time, I've yet to see one of them attack or insult or block someone for taking image descriptions to extremes. I guess they'd rather attack or insult or block me for exceeding Mastodon's holy 500-character limit because that long description with over 20 text transcripts and with the various explanations had to go somewhere.
Sad but true: If you want to survive in the Fediverse, you have to pander those who can be dangerous to you and your reach. And not so much to those who really need it.
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@Emily Vale, Gendermancer As I've said, the digital photograph is the default nowadays. It's so ubiquitous that it's indeed a given unless explicitly stated not to be one. Digital photograph is the standard and should not be mentioned, all other media are exceptions and, thus, must be mentioned.
I don't know whether you've opened the link in my first comment. I always halfway expect Mastodon users to not recognise links unless they're URLs in plain sight. After all, Mastodon can only produce links with URLs in plain sight, so those who only know Mastodon may not know that something in the Fediverse can produce embedded links with the URL hidden and send them to Mastodon.
Anyway, the article that I've linked to includes links to eleven references, five of which explicitly recommend not to mention that something is a digital photograph:- https://www.kwbell.eu/mastonotes/alt-text-for-mastodon-images/ by @KB
- https://axesslab.com/alt-texts/
- https://www.nngroup.com/articles/write-alt-text/
- https://www.continualengine.com/blog/alt-text-on-images/
- https://socialprogress.co.uk/alt-text-what-is-it-and-how-do-i-use-it/
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@Emily Vale, Gendermancer An image description should never start with "Photo of". See here.
Especially alt-texts should be kept short. The digital photograph is considered a default nowadays, so mentioning that an image is a digital photograph is superfluous and should be avoided.
All other media, on the other hand, should be mentioned.
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