#cwalttextmeta — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #cwalttextmeta, aggregated by home.social.
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@DavidM_yeg @Dennis What more is needed?
A full visual description of the settings, the people (of course, avoiding their gender and describing their skin tone rather than their race), their outfits, the surroundings?
The title of the film, including an explanation what this film is, who made it, what it is about, when it was released, who the characters are and who the actors are?
Regardless of neither of this belonging into the alt-text because information that is neither available in the message text nor plainly visible to sighted users in the image does not belong into the alt-text? Because there are people who cannot access alt-text?
https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/wiki/jupiter_rowland/How(20)to(20)describe(20)images(20)in(20)the(20)Fediverse/Don(27)t(20)explain(20)things(20)or(20)give(20)other(20)information(20)only(20)in(20)alt-text(21)
https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/wiki/jupiter_rowland/How(20)to(20)describe(20)images(20)in(20)the(20)Fediverse/Can(20)everyone(20)access(20)alt-text(3f)
And, pray tell, how is all this supposed to fit in 512 characters or fewer so that Misskey, Calckey, Firefish, Iceshrimp-JS, Sharkey, CherryPick and the other Misskey forks won't discard the alt-text?
https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/wiki/jupiter_rowland/How(20)to(20)describe(20)images(20)in(20)the(20)Fediverse/How(20)long(20)can(20)alt-text(20)be(3f)
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Calckey #Firefish #Iceshrimp #Iceshrimp-JS #Sharkey #CherryPick #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta -
@DavidM_yeg @Dennis What more is needed?
A full visual description of the settings, the people (of course, avoiding their gender and describing their skin tone rather than their race), their outfits, the surroundings?
The title of the film, including an explanation what this film is, who made it, what it is about, when it was released, who the characters are and who the actors are?
Regardless of neither of this belonging into the alt-text because information that is neither available in the message text nor plainly visible to sighted users in the image does not belong into the alt-text? Because there are people who cannot access alt-text?
https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/wiki/jupiter_rowland/How(20)to(20)describe(20)images(20)in(20)the(20)Fediverse/Don(27)t(20)explain(20)things(20)or(20)give(20)other(20)information(20)only(20)in(20)alt-text(21)
https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/wiki/jupiter_rowland/How(20)to(20)describe(20)images(20)in(20)the(20)Fediverse/Can(20)everyone(20)access(20)alt-text(3f)
And, pray tell, how is all this supposed to fit in 512 characters or fewer so that Misskey, Calckey, Firefish, Iceshrimp-JS, Sharkey, CherryPick and the other Misskey forks won't discard the alt-text?
https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/wiki/jupiter_rowland/How(20)to(20)describe(20)images(20)in(20)the(20)Fediverse/How(20)long(20)can(20)alt-text(20)be(3f)
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Calckey #Firefish #Iceshrimp #Iceshrimp-JS #Sharkey #CherryPick #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta -
@Danny Boling ☮️ @ADHDeanASL I'm already trying my best. I'm probably way ahead of your requirements. And I'm still constantly trying to up my game and be ahead of everyone's requirements.
I've been "studying" alt-texts and image descriptions both generally and in the Fediverse/in Mastodon's culture for a few years. I've read over 50 alt-text guides on the Web; here's a list I've compiled, complete with links: https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/wiki/jupiter_rowland/How(20)to(20)describe(20)images(20)in(20)the(20)Fediverse/Other(20)resources(20)on(20)image(20)descriptions(20)and(20)alt-text.
In case the page behind this link wasn't obvious enough: Yes, I'm working on a wiki about image descriptions and alt-texts in the Fediverse. I take this topic that seriously. As it stands now, I have a bit over 30 rules that had better or actually must be followed when describing images and writing alt-texts in and for the Fediverse.
When I post images, I try hard to follow all these rules. I take into consideration who may receive my image post, what they know about what's in the image, what they don't know, what they may want to know and how curious they may potentially be about the topic, and I write my image descriptions accordingly. I also take the special culture in the Fediverse and particularly on Mastodon into consideration, especially Mastodon's fondness of very detailed image descriptions as well as Mastodon's dislike of having to ask for further information; at least I perceive the latter.
This is also why I rarely post images anymore. (Don't go looking for recent images on this channel that I'm commenting from right now. I've quit posting images here two years ago. I post them elsewhere in the Fediverse now and even that only rarely.) Posting and describing images properly is a huge undertaking if your image posts are all about super-obscure topics. And mine are.
The only images I've posted over the last two years are memes. They're fairly easy to handle. They only need one visual description, ideally a fairly short one even, and it goes into the alt-text. Still, they require explanations if folks won't understand them right off the bat. And they certainly won't understand my memes about the Fediverse or about very obscure 3-D virtual worlds.
In order to keep my meme posts a bit less extensive, I resort to linking to KnowYourMeme for explanations of meme templates. The alternative that many would prefer would be for me to explain the meme templates in the post, but that would add another five-digit number of characters to the post. Been there, actually done that: "One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor" required over 12,000 characters of explanation.
I'd also post renderings from the 3-D virtual worlds that I sometimes meme about. But the effort to do so is a whole lot bigger. That's because I describe each one of my virtual world renderings twice. One is the "short" description that goes into the alt-text. The other one is the "long", actually fully detailed description that goes into the message text. The latter contains transcripts of all bits of text within the borders of the image, readable in the image or not. It also contains all explanations necessary to understand the image and its descriptions.
I haven't posted any virtual world renderings in two years now. I've been working on and off on a series of simple avatar portraits in slightly different outfits for over a year and a half now, and even the first image with three portraits isn't done yet, much less all four image for the first post or actually all images in the series.
My personal record of fairly uninterrupted image-describing is two full days, once for three images with some 73,000 characters of long descriptions, once for a single image with over 60,000 characters of long description. The latter does not include distilling the short description for the alt-text from the long description; I had to do that the morning of the third day.
Why they have to be that long? Here's my explanation: https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/95b6e36d-7fcd-4791-8cc1-c93e8b9975a3.
Unfortunately, I don't have any example of a 3-D virtual world rendering that's recent enough that the image descriptions aren't painfully outdated.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta -
@Danny Boling ☮️ @ADHDeanASL I'm already trying my best. I'm probably way ahead of your requirements. And I'm still constantly trying to up my game and be ahead of everyone's requirements.
I've been "studying" alt-texts and image descriptions both generally and in the Fediverse/in Mastodon's culture for a few years. I've read over 50 alt-text guides on the Web; here's a list I've compiled, complete with links: https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/wiki/jupiter_rowland/How(20)to(20)describe(20)images(20)in(20)the(20)Fediverse/Other(20)resources(20)on(20)image(20)descriptions(20)and(20)alt-text.
In case the page behind this link wasn't obvious enough: Yes, I'm working on a wiki about image descriptions and alt-texts in the Fediverse. I take this topic that seriously. As it stands now, I have a bit over 30 rules that had better or actually must be followed when describing images and writing alt-texts in and for the Fediverse.
When I post images, I try hard to follow all these rules. I take into consideration who may receive my image post, what they know about what's in the image, what they don't know, what they may want to know and how curious they may potentially be about the topic, and I write my image descriptions accordingly. I also take the special culture in the Fediverse and particularly on Mastodon into consideration, especially Mastodon's fondness of very detailed image descriptions as well as Mastodon's dislike of having to ask for further information; at least I perceive the latter.
This is also why I rarely post images anymore. (Don't go looking for recent images on this channel that I'm commenting from right now. I've quit posting images here two years ago. I post them elsewhere in the Fediverse now and even that only rarely.) Posting and describing images properly is a huge undertaking if your image posts are all about super-obscure topics. And mine are.
The only images I've posted over the last two years are memes. They're fairly easy to handle. They only need one visual description, ideally a fairly short one even, and it goes into the alt-text. Still, they require explanations if folks won't understand them right off the bat. And they certainly won't understand my memes about the Fediverse or about very obscure 3-D virtual worlds.
In order to keep my meme posts a bit less extensive, I resort to linking to KnowYourMeme for explanations of meme templates. The alternative that many would prefer would be for me to explain the meme templates in the post, but that would add another five-digit number of characters to the post. Been there, actually done that: "One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor" required over 12,000 characters of explanation.
I'd also post renderings from the 3-D virtual worlds that I sometimes meme about. But the effort to do so is a whole lot bigger. That's because I describe each one of my virtual world renderings twice. One is the "short" description that goes into the alt-text. The other one is the "long", actually fully detailed description that goes into the message text. The latter contains transcripts of all bits of text within the borders of the image, readable in the image or not. It also contains all explanations necessary to understand the image and its descriptions.
I haven't posted any virtual world renderings in two years now. I've been working on and off on a series of simple avatar portraits in slightly different outfits for over a year and a half now, and even the first image with three portraits isn't done yet, much less all four image for the first post or actually all images in the series.
My personal record of fairly uninterrupted image-describing is two full days, once for three images with some 73,000 characters of long descriptions, once for a single image with over 60,000 characters of long description. The latter does not include distilling the short description for the alt-text from the long description; I had to do that the morning of the third day.
Why they have to be that long? Here's my explanation: https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/95b6e36d-7fcd-4791-8cc1-c93e8b9975a3.
Unfortunately, I don't have any example of a 3-D virtual world rendering that's recent enough that the image descriptions aren't painfully outdated.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta -
@calends :trantifa: 🏴️ Line breaks and the quotation marks from your keyboard are both terrible ideas in alt-text. Both are not officially count as elements supported in alt-text, and especially line breaks in alt-text are an invention by complete laypeople on Mastodon.
Line breaks are a bad idea because screen readers will consider each paragraph in your alt-text an individual alt-text for an individual image. And screen readers tend to start reading out alt-texts for images with something like, "Graphic."
So if your alt-text has three paragraphs, a screen reader will start reading out each one with, "Graphic."
Reference #1: Steve Faulkner (@Steve Faulkner), Short note on coding alt-text, TPGI, September 15th, 2015; https://www.tpgi.com/short-note-on-coding-alt-text/.
Reference #2: Adrian Roselli, Long alt, adrianroselli.com, April 20th, 2024, last update November 8th, 2024; https://adrianroselli.com/2024/04/long-alt.html
Double quotes from your keyboard are an even worse idea. That's because they can make certain Fediverse server applications malfunction. I'm not even joking here.
First of all, there's Hubzilla, the most feature-rich Fediverse server software of all and one of the most technologically advanced (https://hubzilla.org; https://joinfediverse.wiki/Hubzilla). I'm commenting from Hubzilla right now.
When there are keyboard double quotes in an alt-text, Hubzilla renders them as their corresponding HTML entities:". A screen reader will read them out as something like, "And quot," and raise its voice afterwards unless a full stop follows.
And then there are (streams) (https://codeberg.org/streams/streams; https://joinfediverse.wiki/(streams)) and Forte (https://codeberg.org/fortified/forte), both descendants of Hubzilla, created and still maintained by Hubzilla's original creator.
These two use keyboard double quotes as alt-text delimiters internally. So when they encounter the first keyboard double quote in an alt-text, they will assume that this is where the alt-text ends. They will not render the parts of the alt-text starting with that first keyboard double quote. Instead, they will silently discard them.
Quotation marks are unnecessary in alt-text anyway. In stark contrast to what everyone on Mastodon believes, alt-text is mostly for screen reader applications. But if you absolutely need quotation marks in alt-text, either use single quotes or typographically correct quotes (“”or»«or«»).
One more thing: You've mentioned "supplemental info". I sincerely hope that you aren't talking about explanations for the image itself.
Explanations, credits, license information and any other information that is neither present in the message text nor visible to sighted users in the image does not belong into alt-text.
Explanations and other extra information must always go into the message text where everyone can access it who can access the message!
Why? Because there are people who cannot access alt-texts. I'm still not joking.
I've explained this in my WIP wiki about image descriptions and alt-texts in the Fediverse: https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/wiki/jupiter_rowland/How(20)to(20)describe(20)images(20)in(20)the(20)Fediverse/Can(20)everyone(20)access(20)alt-text(3f)
Reference: kwbell.eu (@KB), 'Alt' text for Mastodon images, April 9th, 2023, last edited June 1st, 2023
Another reference: these actual Mastodon posts which are comments on one of my posts from a few years ago, posted by a user whose hands don't work sufficiently enough to have the physical ability to open an alt-text.
RE: https://hachyderm.io/@gnomicutterance/110685869957855464
RE: https://hachyderm.io/@gnomicutterance/110690586917684870
RE: https://hachyderm.io/@gnomicutterance/110690592405651398
RE: https://hachyderm.io/@gnomicutterance/110690603250669254
RE: https://hachyderm.io/@gnomicutterance/110691919197248049
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #A11y #Accessibility -
@calends :trantifa: 🏴️ Line breaks and the quotation marks from your keyboard are both terrible ideas in alt-text. Both are not officially count as elements supported in alt-text, and especially line breaks in alt-text are an invention by complete laypeople on Mastodon.
Line breaks are a bad idea because screen readers will consider each paragraph in your alt-text an individual alt-text for an individual image. And screen readers tend to start reading out alt-texts for images with something like, "Graphic."
So if your alt-text has three paragraphs, a screen reader will start reading out each one with, "Graphic."
Reference #1: Steve Faulkner (@Steve Faulkner), Short note on coding alt-text, TPGI, September 15th, 2015; https://www.tpgi.com/short-note-on-coding-alt-text/.
Reference #2: Adrian Roselli, Long alt, adrianroselli.com, April 20th, 2024, last update November 8th, 2024; https://adrianroselli.com/2024/04/long-alt.html
Double quotes from your keyboard are an even worse idea. That's because they can make certain Fediverse server applications malfunction. I'm not even joking here.
First of all, there's Hubzilla, the most feature-rich Fediverse server software of all and one of the most technologically advanced (https://hubzilla.org; https://joinfediverse.wiki/Hubzilla). I'm commenting from Hubzilla right now.
When there are keyboard double quotes in an alt-text, Hubzilla renders them as their corresponding HTML entities:". A screen reader will read them out as something like, "And quot," and raise its voice afterwards unless a full stop follows.
And then there are (streams) (https://codeberg.org/streams/streams; https://joinfediverse.wiki/(streams)) and Forte (https://codeberg.org/fortified/forte), both descendants of Hubzilla, created and still maintained by Hubzilla's original creator.
These two use keyboard double quotes as alt-text delimiters internally. So when they encounter the first keyboard double quote in an alt-text, they will assume that this is where the alt-text ends. They will not render the parts of the alt-text starting with that first keyboard double quote. Instead, they will silently discard them.
Quotation marks are unnecessary in alt-text anyway. In stark contrast to what everyone on Mastodon believes, alt-text is mostly for screen reader applications. But if you absolutely need quotation marks in alt-text, either use single quotes or typographically correct quotes (“”or»«or«»).
One more thing: You've mentioned "supplemental info". I sincerely hope that you aren't talking about explanations for the image itself.
Explanations, credits, license information and any other information that is neither present in the message text nor visible to sighted users in the image does not belong into alt-text.
Explanations and other extra information must always go into the message text where everyone can access it who can access the message!
Why? Because there are people who cannot access alt-texts. I'm still not joking.
I've explained this in my WIP wiki about image descriptions and alt-texts in the Fediverse: https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/wiki/jupiter_rowland/How(20)to(20)describe(20)images(20)in(20)the(20)Fediverse/Can(20)everyone(20)access(20)alt-text(3f)
Reference: kwbell.eu (@KB), 'Alt' text for Mastodon images, April 9th, 2023, last edited June 1st, 2023
Another reference: these actual Mastodon posts which are comments on one of my posts from a few years ago, posted by a user whose hands don't work sufficiently enough to have the physical ability to open an alt-text.
RE: https://hachyderm.io/@gnomicutterance/110685869957855464
RE: https://hachyderm.io/@gnomicutterance/110690586917684870
RE: https://hachyderm.io/@gnomicutterance/110690592405651398
RE: https://hachyderm.io/@gnomicutterance/110690603250669254
RE: https://hachyderm.io/@gnomicutterance/110691919197248049
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #A11y #Accessibility -
@Irina I'm pretty certain that there's some Mastodon phone app out there that does this fully automatically, and the users don't know about it.
The best would be to first ask them what app they use and then to ask the app developer(s) to stop this.
#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #MastodonApp #MastodonApps -
@Irina I'm pretty certain that there's some Mastodon phone app out there that does this fully automatically, and the users don't know about it.
The best would be to first ask them what app they use and then to ask the app developer(s) to stop this.
#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #MastodonApp #MastodonApps -
@Roknrol Here are a few older alt-texts that I've written for original images of my own.Digital shaded rendering of the main building of the Universal Campus, a downloadable island location for 3-D virtual worlds based on OpenSimulator. The camera position is about three metres or ten feet above the ground. The camera is tilted slightly upward and rotated slightly to the left from the building's longitudinal axis. The futuristic building is over 200 metres long, stretching far into the distance, and its front is about 50 metres wide. Its structure is mostly textured to resemble brushed stainless steel, and almost everything in-between is grey tinted glass. The main entrance of the building in the middle of the front has two pairs of glass doors. They are surrounded by a massive complex geometrical structure, very roughly reminiscent of a vintage video game spacecraft with the front facing upward. Four huge cylindrical pillars carry the roof end, the outer two of which extend beyond it. All are tilted away from the landing area in front of the building and at the same time outward to the sides. The sides of the building are slightly tilted themselves. In the distance, a large geodesic dome rises from the building. There is a large circular area in front of the main entrance as well as several wide paths. They have light concrete textures, and they are lined with low walls with almost white concrete textures. Furthermore, various shrubs and trees decorate the scenery. A more detailed description including explanations and text transcripts can be found in the post.
Digital rendering from OSgrid, one of the biggest out of thousands of 3-D virtual worlds based on OpenSimulator. It shows Juno Rowland, a female avatar, standing at the end of a wooden pier with the ocean in the background. The avatar is designed to resemble a woman who is no older than in her 30s. She is slim underneath loose-fitting clothes. She has light to medium-light skin, brown eyes and black hair which is styled as a neck-long bob. She is wearing a black tank top with the logo of the 17th birthday of OSgrid on it, a straight, lower-thigh-length, light-to-medium-light-brown denim miniskirt, a pair of black flat ballet shoes and a golden necklace with the OSgrid logo. The OSgrid logo is made up from five identical parallelograms arranged in a circular, star-like pattern. It is also part of the birthday logo which is mostly two tones of yellowish orange. The writing on the birthday logo reads, from top to bottom, “OSgrid”, “The Open Source Metaverse” and “17th Birthday”. A more detailed description of the image, including explanations, can be found in the post itself. If you are on Mastodon, Misskey or one of their forks, you can find it by opening the summary and content warning which includes, “CW: long (22,270 characters, including 20,377 characters of image descriptions), eye contact”, and then following the actual post text. If you are on Pleroma, Akkoma, another Pleroma fork, Friendica, Hubzilla or (streams), the full description will follow right after the images.
Digital rendering from OSgrid, one of the biggest out of thousands of 3-D virtual worlds based on OpenSimulator. It shows Juno Rowland, a female avatar, standing at the end of a wooden pier with the ocean in the background. The avatar is designed to resemble a woman who is no older than in her 30s. She is slim underneath loose-fitting clothes. She has light to medium-light skin and black hair which is styled as a neck-long bob. She is wearing a black tank top, a straight, lower-thigh-length, light-to-medium-light-brown denim miniskirt, a pair of black flat ballet shoes and a golden necklace. She is looking at the cover of the Leonard Cohen album Recent Songs on a white easel. The cover is a painting of the musician's face. He is shown to be a middle-aged man with light skin, green eyes and black hair in a black shirt. A hummingbird is drawn hovering above his shoulder to the left. The background is medium blue. Cohen's name and the album title are written in the top corners. A more detailed description of the image, including explanations, can be found in the post itself. If you are on Mastodon, Misskey or one of their forks, you can find it by opening the summary and content warning which includes, “CW: long (22,270 characters, including 20,377 characters of image descriptions), eye contact”, and then following the actual post text. If you are on Pleroma, Akkoma, another Pleroma fork, Friendica, Hubzilla or (streams), the full description will follow right after the images.
Good? Too long? Still not sufficiently detailed? If the latter, then rest assured: When the alt-text announces an additional, much longer image description in the message text, then there actually is one.
That is, nowadays, my goal is to limit my alt-texts to a maximum of 512 characters. That's because if a post with a longer alt-text arrives on Misskey or Iceshrimp-JS or Sharkey or another Misskey fork, then the alt-text is deleted without any trace. It will look like there has never been any alt-text to begin with.
When I post memes, it's usually easier to keep alt-texts shorter. The tricky part is to still have all the text transcripts in the alt-text because I only write one visual description for each of my meme images unless it's based on a virtual world rendering. I do give some explanations in my meme posts, though.
These two are very recent:Image macro, based on a screen capture from the Disney and Pixar animated film Finding Nemo. At the top, there is a white space with a two-line caption: “OSgrid: offline for weeks to come,” and “Owners of other grids, looking at OSgrid residents:”. In the screen capture below, ten seagulls are perched on two mooring lines in the background. An eleventh seagull pokes its head into the image from the bottom right. They all look at the camera. Each one is labelled with the question, “Mine?”
Image macro, based on a screen capture from the animated film Finding Nemo. At the top, there is a white space with a two-line caption: “Fediverse admin: announces the end of their instance and asks their users to migrate to other instances,” and “Admins of other instances:”. In the screen capture below, ten seagulls are perched on two mooring lines. An eleventh seagull pokes its head into the image from the bottom right. They all look at the camera. Each one is labelled with the question, “Mine?”
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Iceshrimp #Iceshrimp-JS #Sharkey #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta -
@Roknrol Here are a few older alt-texts that I've written for original images of my own.Digital shaded rendering of the main building of the Universal Campus, a downloadable island location for 3-D virtual worlds based on OpenSimulator. The camera position is about three metres or ten feet above the ground. The camera is tilted slightly upward and rotated slightly to the left from the building's longitudinal axis. The futuristic building is over 200 metres long, stretching far into the distance, and its front is about 50 metres wide. Its structure is mostly textured to resemble brushed stainless steel, and almost everything in-between is grey tinted glass. The main entrance of the building in the middle of the front has two pairs of glass doors. They are surrounded by a massive complex geometrical structure, very roughly reminiscent of a vintage video game spacecraft with the front facing upward. Four huge cylindrical pillars carry the roof end, the outer two of which extend beyond it. All are tilted away from the landing area in front of the building and at the same time outward to the sides. The sides of the building are slightly tilted themselves. In the distance, a large geodesic dome rises from the building. There is a large circular area in front of the main entrance as well as several wide paths. They have light concrete textures, and they are lined with low walls with almost white concrete textures. Furthermore, various shrubs and trees decorate the scenery. A more detailed description including explanations and text transcripts can be found in the post.
Digital rendering from OSgrid, one of the biggest out of thousands of 3-D virtual worlds based on OpenSimulator. It shows Juno Rowland, a female avatar, standing at the end of a wooden pier with the ocean in the background. The avatar is designed to resemble a woman who is no older than in her 30s. She is slim underneath loose-fitting clothes. She has light to medium-light skin, brown eyes and black hair which is styled as a neck-long bob. She is wearing a black tank top with the logo of the 17th birthday of OSgrid on it, a straight, lower-thigh-length, light-to-medium-light-brown denim miniskirt, a pair of black flat ballet shoes and a golden necklace with the OSgrid logo. The OSgrid logo is made up from five identical parallelograms arranged in a circular, star-like pattern. It is also part of the birthday logo which is mostly two tones of yellowish orange. The writing on the birthday logo reads, from top to bottom, “OSgrid”, “The Open Source Metaverse” and “17th Birthday”. A more detailed description of the image, including explanations, can be found in the post itself. If you are on Mastodon, Misskey or one of their forks, you can find it by opening the summary and content warning which includes, “CW: long (22,270 characters, including 20,377 characters of image descriptions), eye contact”, and then following the actual post text. If you are on Pleroma, Akkoma, another Pleroma fork, Friendica, Hubzilla or (streams), the full description will follow right after the images.
Digital rendering from OSgrid, one of the biggest out of thousands of 3-D virtual worlds based on OpenSimulator. It shows Juno Rowland, a female avatar, standing at the end of a wooden pier with the ocean in the background. The avatar is designed to resemble a woman who is no older than in her 30s. She is slim underneath loose-fitting clothes. She has light to medium-light skin and black hair which is styled as a neck-long bob. She is wearing a black tank top, a straight, lower-thigh-length, light-to-medium-light-brown denim miniskirt, a pair of black flat ballet shoes and a golden necklace. She is looking at the cover of the Leonard Cohen album Recent Songs on a white easel. The cover is a painting of the musician's face. He is shown to be a middle-aged man with light skin, green eyes and black hair in a black shirt. A hummingbird is drawn hovering above his shoulder to the left. The background is medium blue. Cohen's name and the album title are written in the top corners. A more detailed description of the image, including explanations, can be found in the post itself. If you are on Mastodon, Misskey or one of their forks, you can find it by opening the summary and content warning which includes, “CW: long (22,270 characters, including 20,377 characters of image descriptions), eye contact”, and then following the actual post text. If you are on Pleroma, Akkoma, another Pleroma fork, Friendica, Hubzilla or (streams), the full description will follow right after the images.
Good? Too long? Still not sufficiently detailed? If the latter, then rest assured: When the alt-text announces an additional, much longer image description in the message text, then there actually is one.
That is, nowadays, my goal is to limit my alt-texts to a maximum of 512 characters. That's because if a post with a longer alt-text arrives on Misskey or Iceshrimp-JS or Sharkey or another Misskey fork, then the alt-text is deleted without any trace. It will look like there has never been any alt-text to begin with.
When I post memes, it's usually easier to keep alt-texts shorter. The tricky part is to still have all the text transcripts in the alt-text because I only write one visual description for each of my meme images unless it's based on a virtual world rendering. I do give some explanations in my meme posts, though.
These two are very recent:Image macro, based on a screen capture from the Disney and Pixar animated film Finding Nemo. At the top, there is a white space with a two-line caption: “OSgrid: offline for weeks to come,” and “Owners of other grids, looking at OSgrid residents:”. In the screen capture below, ten seagulls are perched on two mooring lines in the background. An eleventh seagull pokes its head into the image from the bottom right. They all look at the camera. Each one is labelled with the question, “Mine?”
Image macro, based on a screen capture from the animated film Finding Nemo. At the top, there is a white space with a two-line caption: “Fediverse admin: announces the end of their instance and asks their users to migrate to other instances,” and “Admins of other instances:”. In the screen capture below, ten seagulls are perched on two mooring lines. An eleventh seagull pokes its head into the image from the bottom right. They all look at the camera. Each one is labelled with the question, “Mine?”
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Iceshrimp #Iceshrimp-JS #Sharkey #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta -
CW: Alt-texts for profile images probably becoming mandatory, image descriptions for images in Mastodon link previews probably becoming mandatory, probably even for non-Mastodon users; CW: long (almost 4,500 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, alt-text meta, image description meta, ableism meta
More and more Mastodon users are acting like alt-texts for profile images are becoming mandatory Fediverse-wide. Never mind that they're currently being rolled out by and by and only on Mastodon even.
Here on Hubzilla, they aren't even a thought, also because Hubzilla doesn't know the concept of images having their own dedicated alt-text database field. (Before you ask: Hubzilla handles images and therefore alt-texts in messages vastly differently from Mastodon to begin with.)
At the same time, more and more Mastodon users are acting like image descriptions for the images in the link previews that are generated automatically in Mastodon timelines are becoming mandatory Fediverse-wide. Never mind that Mastodon itself has barely got enough character capacity to describe these preview images at the high level of detail that so many Mastodon users love, what with its meagre default character limit of 500.
Also, never mind that you'll have to edit your post to describe the preview image because it only appears after you've tooted your toot, so you can't see it before you toot your toot.
Also, never mind that everyone outside Hubzilla will get an image description for an image that's entirely absent because they don't have Mastodon-style link previews, because these link previews are a Mastodon-only thing.
Again, this is even worse here on Hubzilla. Unlike Mastodon, Hubzilla has a preview button that lets you look at your message before you actually send it. But Hubzilla doesn't generate link previews. And Hubzilla's preview button doesn't offer you the option to show you what your message will look like on Mastodon.
So I'd have to- write and send my message as usual
- switch to a tab with mastodon.social
- look for my message by using the hashtag search
- check whether Mastodon has generated a link preview, and if so, which image it has chosen
- find a copy of the image with the highest resolution possible;
alternatively, if it's an in-world image from OpenSim, log into OpenSim, travel to that place and take a close look at the place to write a highly detailed image description (takes from five hours to two days) - switch back to my Hubzilla tab
- edit my message
- add the image description
- re-count the characters in the message
- edit the message
- add a long post content warning with the current character count if there is none, and it isn't a comment; edit the character count of the existing long post content warning if there already is one
- save the edit
- discover that Mastodon hasn't recognised my edit as such, and now there are two copies of the same message on Mastodon, the old one without the image description and the new, longer one with the image description
All just to describe an image that isn't even there for my fellow Hubzilla users. Nor is it there for my contacts on Friendica, (streams), Forte, Misskey, Iceshrimp-JS, Iceshrimp.NET, Sharkey, Pleroma, Akkoma, snac2, GoToSocial, Hollo, Socialhome, Mitra, PieFed, Wafrn etc.
By the way, if a message comes from something else than Mastodon, and there's no actual link in it, Mastodon often creates a link preview for the profile or channel page of whoever has sent the message and picks their profile photo as the image for the link preview. Essentially, I'd have to reliably know when Mastodon does that, write two image descriptions for my profile photo (it's a rendering from OpenSim, and I always describe these twice; besides, people should have a shorter description next to my usual detailed description) and copy-paste both into each post for which Mastodon will generate a link preview for my channel page.
Fortunately, Mastodon doesn't show Hubzilla profiles or channels like Hubzilla itself shows them, and neither do Mastodon apps. Otherwise, if Mastodon users figure out that the background image of my channel is part of my channel customisation and not a default Hubzilla Web UI element, they may demand I add an alt-text for the background image, lest I be mass-blocked as an ableist.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Ableist #Ableism #AbleismMeta #CWAbleismMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Hubzilla #MastodonCulture #FediverseCulture #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity -
CW: Alt-texts for profile images probably becoming mandatory, image descriptions for images in Mastodon link previews probably becoming mandatory, probably even for non-Mastodon users; CW: long (almost 4,500 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, alt-text meta, image description meta, ableism meta
More and more Mastodon users are acting like alt-texts for profile images are becoming mandatory Fediverse-wide. Never mind that they're currently being rolled out by and by and only on Mastodon even.
Here on Hubzilla, they aren't even a thought, also because Hubzilla doesn't know the concept of images having their own dedicated alt-text database field. (Before you ask: Hubzilla handles images and therefore alt-texts in messages vastly differently from Mastodon to begin with.)
At the same time, more and more Mastodon users are acting like image descriptions for the images in the link previews that are generated automatically in Mastodon timelines are becoming mandatory Fediverse-wide. Never mind that Mastodon itself has barely got enough character capacity to describe these preview images at the high level of detail that so many Mastodon users love, what with its meagre default character limit of 500.
Also, never mind that you'll have to edit your post to describe the preview image because it only appears after you've tooted your toot, so you can't see it before you toot your toot.
Also, never mind that everyone outside Hubzilla will get an image description for an image that's entirely absent because they don't have Mastodon-style link previews, because these link previews are a Mastodon-only thing.
Again, this is even worse here on Hubzilla. Unlike Mastodon, Hubzilla has a preview button that lets you look at your message before you actually send it. But Hubzilla doesn't generate link previews. And Hubzilla's preview button doesn't offer you the option to show you what your message will look like on Mastodon.
So I'd have to- write and send my message as usual
- switch to a tab with mastodon.social
- look for my message by using the hashtag search
- check whether Mastodon has generated a link preview, and if so, which image it has chosen
- find a copy of the image with the highest resolution possible;
alternatively, if it's an in-world image from OpenSim, log into OpenSim, travel to that place and take a close look at the place to write a highly detailed image description (takes from five hours to two days) - switch back to my Hubzilla tab
- edit my message
- add the image description
- re-count the characters in the message
- edit the message
- add a long post content warning with the current character count if there is none, and it isn't a comment; edit the character count of the existing long post content warning if there already is one
- save the edit
- discover that Mastodon hasn't recognised my edit as such, and now there are two copies of the same message on Mastodon, the old one without the image description and the new, longer one with the image description
All just to describe an image that isn't even there for my fellow Hubzilla users. Nor is it there for my contacts on Friendica, (streams), Forte, Misskey, Iceshrimp-JS, Iceshrimp.NET, Sharkey, Pleroma, Akkoma, snac2, GoToSocial, Hollo, Socialhome, Mitra, PieFed, Wafrn etc.
By the way, if a message comes from something else than Mastodon, and there's no actual link in it, Mastodon often creates a link preview for the profile or channel page of whoever has sent the message and picks their profile photo as the image for the link preview. Essentially, I'd have to reliably know when Mastodon does that, write two image descriptions for my profile photo (it's a rendering from OpenSim, and I always describe these twice; besides, people should have a shorter description next to my usual detailed description) and copy-paste both into each post for which Mastodon will generate a link preview for my channel page.
Fortunately, Mastodon doesn't show Hubzilla profiles or channels like Hubzilla itself shows them, and neither do Mastodon apps. Otherwise, if Mastodon users figure out that the background image of my channel is part of my channel customisation and not a default Hubzilla Web UI element, they may demand I add an alt-text for the background image, lest I be mass-blocked as an ableist.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Ableist #Ableism #AbleismMeta #CWAbleismMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Hubzilla #MastodonCulture #FediverseCulture #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity -
@EndlessMason Tip:- Open the image in an image viewer.
- Write the image description in a plain-text editor.
- Then upload the image.
- Lastly, copy-paste the image description from the text editor into the alt-text field.
#AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta -
@EndlessMason Tip:- Open the image in an image viewer.
- Write the image description in a plain-text editor.
- Then upload the image.
- Lastly, copy-paste the image description from the text editor into the alt-text field.
#AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta -
@HeliosPiAgreed. I'm also complaining that it takes a lot more time for me to post media with alt-text, proportionally, and doing so doesn't increase attention to that post.
@Aaron Caskey-DemaretI agree. Alt text may be an amazing multiplier, but zero times anything is still zero 🙂
Sounds like me. My image posts have next to no audience.
Basically, I've got three kinds of image posts.
One, memes about the Fediverse. And I don't mean memes that treat the Fediverse as only Mastodon, or that make the Fediverse being Mastodon with a few things attached as add-ons being the unquestioned standard. I post them on @Jupiter's Fedi-Memes on (streams).
Two, memes about 3-D virtual worlds. I post these on @Jupiter Rowland's (streams) outlet.
Both of them are tricky in various ways. They only get one visual description each, and it goes into the alt-text. The tricky part here is that I no longer let my alt-texts grow longer than 512 characters. That's due to a bug on Misskey and its various forks and forks of forks (Sharkey, Iceshrimp-JS etc.): They only support alt-texts with up to 512 characters. They're supposed to truncate longer alt-texts, but instead, they delete longer alt-texts with no trace. So if you write an alt-text that's longer than 512 characters, someone on Misskey or Sharkey or so will think that you haven't written any alt-text at all.
In addition, I have to explain them which I do in the message text and not in the alt-text. My impression of especially Mastodon is that people love receiving explanations along with images that they don't understand right off the bat. I believe it has gotten to the point that these explanations are becoming or have since become almost as mandatory as visual descriptions. And both the Fediverse beyond Mastodon and 3-D virtual worlds are super-obscure topics that require explanations, not to mention that not everyone knows and understands all meme templates. So I have to explain my own image macros plus the topic they're about plus the meme templates I've used.
This is what really requires time and effort. That is, for the meme templates, I resort to links to KnowYourMeme. Some people on Mastodon are staunchly against links to explanations and demand that one explain everything right in the post. I've done that once. The result was six explanations with over 12,000 characters for one single meme template ("One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor"), and I haven't even explained The Lord of the Rings and its characters. I don't really think these people prefer 12,000 characters in one post to one link to KnowYourMeme, even if the two explanations for the topic took up another 12,000+ characters.
Well, and lastly, I sometimes post renderings from 3-D virtual worlds. I post these on @Jupiter Rowland's (streams) outlet, too. If I post them at all, for I haven't posted any in over two years.
That's because the effort is even bigger. Not only do I have to explain them, but I have to describe them twice. The image description in the alt-text is the short one. Again, no explanations, and this time, usually no text transcripts either. And then there's the long, fully detailed image description in the message text. It contains all explanations necessary, and it contains transcripts of any and all bits of text anywhere within the borders of the image, readable or not.
If I'm lucky, I don't have to write much more than 20,000 characters of descriptions, explanations and transcripts for one post. If I'm not so lucky, this block will exceed 60,000 characters and take two full days to research for and write for only one image.I treat it like muscle, gotta keep my alt-text skills sharp cos one day someone might actually want to read my shitposts.
I actually try to optimise and improve my image descriptions further and further whenever I learn something new, e.g. new image-describing rules or guidelines. And I've learned enough about describing images and writing alt-texts specifically for the Fediverse that I've started putting together a wiki about that special topic.
Maybe I'll start following the advice from Veronica with Four Eyes and give two visual descriptions for each of my image, one in the alt-text, one in the message text for those who are visually impaired enough to not see my images clearly, but not so visually impaired that they require a screen reader to read the text on the screen.
Maybe I might go as far as describing my virtual world renderings three times so that there's an additional shorter description in the message text.
I mean, as you can probably tell from this comment, I don't have to worry about local character limits.
CC: @Em :official_verified:
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta -
@HeliosPiAgreed. I'm also complaining that it takes a lot more time for me to post media with alt-text, proportionally, and doing so doesn't increase attention to that post.
@Aaron Caskey-DemaretI agree. Alt text may be an amazing multiplier, but zero times anything is still zero 🙂
Sounds like me. My image posts have next to no audience.
Basically, I've got three kinds of image posts.
One, memes about the Fediverse. And I don't mean memes that treat the Fediverse as only Mastodon, or that make the Fediverse being Mastodon with a few things attached as add-ons being the unquestioned standard. I post them on @Jupiter's Fedi-Memes on (streams).
Two, memes about 3-D virtual worlds. I post these on @Jupiter Rowland's (streams) outlet.
Both of them are tricky in various ways. They only get one visual description each, and it goes into the alt-text. The tricky part here is that I no longer let my alt-texts grow longer than 512 characters. That's due to a bug on Misskey and its various forks and forks of forks (Sharkey, Iceshrimp-JS etc.): They only support alt-texts with up to 512 characters. They're supposed to truncate longer alt-texts, but instead, they delete longer alt-texts with no trace. So if you write an alt-text that's longer than 512 characters, someone on Misskey or Sharkey or so will think that you haven't written any alt-text at all.
In addition, I have to explain them which I do in the message text and not in the alt-text. My impression of especially Mastodon is that people love receiving explanations along with images that they don't understand right off the bat. I believe it has gotten to the point that these explanations are becoming or have since become almost as mandatory as visual descriptions. And both the Fediverse beyond Mastodon and 3-D virtual worlds are super-obscure topics that require explanations, not to mention that not everyone knows and understands all meme templates. So I have to explain my own image macros plus the topic they're about plus the meme templates I've used.
This is what really requires time and effort. That is, for the meme templates, I resort to links to KnowYourMeme. Some people on Mastodon are staunchly against links to explanations and demand that one explain everything right in the post. I've done that once. The result was six explanations with over 12,000 characters for one single meme template ("One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor"), and I haven't even explained The Lord of the Rings and its characters. I don't really think these people prefer 12,000 characters in one post to one link to KnowYourMeme, even if the two explanations for the topic took up another 12,000+ characters.
Well, and lastly, I sometimes post renderings from 3-D virtual worlds. I post these on @Jupiter Rowland's (streams) outlet, too. If I post them at all, for I haven't posted any in over two years.
That's because the effort is even bigger. Not only do I have to explain them, but I have to describe them twice. The image description in the alt-text is the short one. Again, no explanations, and this time, usually no text transcripts either. And then there's the long, fully detailed image description in the message text. It contains all explanations necessary, and it contains transcripts of any and all bits of text anywhere within the borders of the image, readable or not.
If I'm lucky, I don't have to write much more than 20,000 characters of descriptions, explanations and transcripts for one post. If I'm not so lucky, this block will exceed 60,000 characters and take two full days to research for and write for only one image.I treat it like muscle, gotta keep my alt-text skills sharp cos one day someone might actually want to read my shitposts.
I actually try to optimise and improve my image descriptions further and further whenever I learn something new, e.g. new image-describing rules or guidelines. And I've learned enough about describing images and writing alt-texts specifically for the Fediverse that I've started putting together a wiki about that special topic.
Maybe I'll start following the advice from Veronica with Four Eyes and give two visual descriptions for each of my image, one in the alt-text, one in the message text for those who are visually impaired enough to not see my images clearly, but not so visually impaired that they require a screen reader to read the text on the screen.
Maybe I might go as far as describing my virtual world renderings three times so that there's an additional shorter description in the message text.
I mean, as you can probably tell from this comment, I don't have to worry about local character limits.
CC: @Em :official_verified:
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta -
@Early Twix Ich weiß ja auch nicht, ob meine Bildbeschreibungen etwas taugen, vor allem gemäß der Mastodon-Kultur. Ich bin selbst nicht auf Mastodon, aber wenn die eigenen Beiträge auf Mastodon landen, hält man sich entweder an Mastodons Kultur und Mastodons ungeschriebene Regeln, oder man wird massenhaft angegriffen und/oder blockiert.
(Es bringt übrigens nichts, auf dem Kanal, von dem aus ich jetzt gerade kommentierte, nach aktuellen Bildern zu suchen. Alle Bilder hier sind alt. Hier poste ich keine Bilder mehr. Meine wenigen neueren Bilder finden sich auf @Jupiter Rowland's (streams) outlet und @Jupiter's Fedi-Memes on (streams), und die meisten davon sind Memes.)
Andererseits: Wenn ich anderen Leuten Rückmeldungen für ihre Alt-Texte geben würde, würden sehr viel mehr davon mich blockieren und evtl. vorher angreifen als meine Rückmeldung akzeptieren. Ich würde die Alt-Texte nämlich abklopfen nach a) Wahrheitsgehalt, b) Details, c) Einhaltung sehr vieler Regeln und Richtlinien für Bildbeschreibungen und d) Kompatibilität mit einigen Nicht-Mastodon-Fediverse-Serveranwendungen. Die letzteren beiden Punkte sind im Fediverse derart unbekannt, daß Feedback meinerseits fast zwingend zum Verriß werden würde. Deswegen lasse ich es lieber.
CC: @Erdstern @Schauinsland @Ulrike E.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #Bildbeschreibung #Bildbeschreibungen #BildbeschreibungenMeta #CWBildbeschreibungenMeta #Inklusion #MastodonKultur -
@Roland HäderSo how do they think it can be enforced everywhere?
Just like they try to enforce anything everywhere.- They'll simply tell you to do it.
- They'll lecture you about it.
- They'll call you out if you don't do it.
- Once they've caught you not doing it repeatedly, they'll insult you as ableist.
- They'll block you. Before they block you, they'll announce in public that they'll block you because you're an ableist swine who refuses to add alt-text to his images, and they'll mention you so that you can see it.
If you're only here to get and stay in contact with a select few people, none of whom are on Mastodon, you might not care.
But if you need a certain amount of reach especially on Mastodon, this is bad.
I've seen all the above actually happen.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Ableist #Ableism #AbleismMeta #CWAbleismMeta -
@Roland HäderSo how do they think it can be enforced everywhere?
Just like they try to enforce anything everywhere.- They'll simply tell you to do it.
- They'll lecture you about it.
- They'll call you out if you don't do it.
- Once they've caught you not doing it repeatedly, they'll insult you as ableist.
- They'll block you. Before they block you, they'll announce in public that they'll block you because you're an ableist swine who refuses to add alt-text to his images, and they'll mention you so that you can see it.
If you're only here to get and stay in contact with a select few people, none of whom are on Mastodon, you might not care.
But if you need a certain amount of reach especially on Mastodon, this is bad.
I've seen all the above actually happen.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Ableist #Ableism #AbleismMeta #CWAbleismMeta -
@eshepI've not yet seen any posts, attacking or otherwise, taking this stance
Not yet.
Right now, this feature is only available in a development version of Mastodon and only on mastodon.social. Next will be the daredevil servers that run development code to be ahead of release in features.
But eventually, a new stable release will be rolled out with this feature. More and more servers will be upgraded to this new version with this feature. Once typical activist servers like beige.party introduce it, my prediction will come true.I have family who have varying levels of blindness who consume media from all over the internet. All of them have been quite thrilled about the state of these new robot assistants we all now have such easy access to.
Specifically assigned "alt-text" is never necessary.
People who aren't sighted are usually happy about image-describing AI because it's better than nothing, and without image-describing AI, they've got literally nothing.
In fact, however, image-describing AI is just barely better than nothing, if at all. It describes stuff that doesn't matter. It doesn't describe stuff that does matter. Most importantly, it's unreliable and inaccurate. It hallucinates and describes stuff wrongly. However, people who aren't sufficiently sighted don't know. They can't verify whether what the AI says is true because they can't see the image well enough to be able to compare it with the description.
100% hand-written alt-text is always more reliable, more accurate and more fit for the context than AI-generated alt-text will ever be.
I know from first-hand experience. I've tasked an image-describing AI with describing an image which I've described manually with no AI help first, and then I've analysed the AI description and compared it with both the actual image and my descriptions. I've even done that twice. The results were abysmal.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon -
@eshepI've not yet seen any posts, attacking or otherwise, taking this stance
Not yet.
Right now, this feature is only available in a development version of Mastodon and only on mastodon.social. Next will be the daredevil servers that run development code to be ahead of release in features.
But eventually, a new stable release will be rolled out with this feature. More and more servers will be upgraded to this new version with this feature. Once typical activist servers like beige.party introduce it, my prediction will come true.I have family who have varying levels of blindness who consume media from all over the internet. All of them have been quite thrilled about the state of these new robot assistants we all now have such easy access to.
Specifically assigned "alt-text" is never necessary.
People who aren't sighted are usually happy about image-describing AI because it's better than nothing, and without image-describing AI, they've got literally nothing.
In fact, however, image-describing AI is just barely better than nothing, if at all. It describes stuff that doesn't matter. It doesn't describe stuff that does matter. Most importantly, it's unreliable and inaccurate. It hallucinates and describes stuff wrongly. However, people who aren't sufficiently sighted don't know. They can't verify whether what the AI says is true because they can't see the image well enough to be able to compare it with the description.
100% hand-written alt-text is always more reliable, more accurate and more fit for the context than AI-generated alt-text will ever be.
I know from first-hand experience. I've tasked an image-describing AI with describing an image which I've described manually with no AI help first, and then I've analysed the AI description and compared it with both the actual image and my descriptions. I've even done that twice. The results were abysmal.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon -
CW: Mastodon culture will declare alt-texts for profile pictures mandatory Fediverse-wide, but most Fediverse software doesn't even support them; CW: long (over 3,500 characters), Fediverse meta, alt-text meta, image description meta
So there's a new attack vector for Mastodon users against non-Mastodon users in the making.
Mastodon is rolling out alt-texts for what we on Hubzilla call the profile photo and the cover photo. It won't be long until it becomes mandatory in Mastodon's culture to have alt-texts for both these pictures. Regardless of how new this feature is and how many other features that were introduced between March, 2022 and now have not made it into Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules, by the way.
At this point, Mastodon's alt-text activists will start attacking anyone and everyone whom they catch without alt-texts for these two pictures. At least they'll lecture them about the importance of alt-texts. Or they'll block them outright.
What they won't realise:- Not everyone in the Fediverse is on Mastodon. Just because you see something on your Mastodon Web UI or in your Mastodon app, doesn't mean it's on or from Mastodon itself.
- In fact, that particular user might not be on Mastodon.
- Just because Mastodon rolls out a new feature, doesn't mean everything in the Fediverse rolls out the same feature at the same time. This means that there's a whole lot of Fediverse server software that does not offer alt-texts for profile pictures, and that probably won't offer them for quite a while or ever.
- Also, Mastodon's culture is not and will never be the culture of the whole Fediverse. Sorry, Mastodon fundamentalists, but some software has been here before Mastodon, its culture is older than Mastodon itself, and it's technologically incompatible with Mastodon's unwritten rules.
Here on Hubzilla, where I'm posting from right now (in case you really thought I'm on Mastodon just like you), there is no such thing as a dedicated field for alt-texts anywhere. Even if you want to post pictures, there is no alt-text entry mask, and there is no alt-text database field for the images.
Instead, both images and alt-texts are handled like on a blog: You embed the image somewhere in the post text using markup code. In a sense, you program the image into the post. And if you want the image to have alt-text, you have to program the alt-text into the image-embedding code. If you're afraid of coding, Hubzilla is not for you.
But if there's no entry mask and no database field for alt-texts in posts, there won't be either for the profile images either. That is, unless Hubzilla adopts the alt-text field from (streams) and Forte where alt-texts can be added to uploaded images in the Photo app so that they're automatically inserted whenever you embed an image in a message. Using that alt-text field for profile images should be trivial then.
If you want or need the images in my profile described: I don't have a description for my profile photo. For my cover photo, I actually have two. They're both in this post: https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/display/c796febd-8ce2-472b-a46b-23fdf6b16f18. One is in the alt-text which you probably can't open when you're on a phone; the alt-text is 1,500 characters long, a bit over 1,400 of which are visual description. The other one is in the post text itself. But you'd better have a lot of time at your hand because it's over 60,000 characters long, and it'll probably take you a few hours to read it.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Hubzilla #MastodonCulture #FediverseCulture #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity -
CW: Mastodon culture will declare alt-texts for profile pictures mandatory Fediverse-wide, but most Fediverse software doesn't even support them; CW: long (over 3,500 characters), Fediverse meta, alt-text meta, image description meta
So there's a new attack vector for Mastodon users against non-Mastodon users in the making.
Mastodon is rolling out alt-texts for what we on Hubzilla call the profile photo and the cover photo. It won't be long until it becomes mandatory in Mastodon's culture to have alt-texts for both these pictures. Regardless of how new this feature is and how many other features that were introduced between March, 2022 and now have not made it into Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules, by the way.
At this point, Mastodon's alt-text activists will start attacking anyone and everyone whom they catch without alt-texts for these two pictures. At least they'll lecture them about the importance of alt-texts. Or they'll block them outright.
What they won't realise:- Not everyone in the Fediverse is on Mastodon. Just because you see something on your Mastodon Web UI or in your Mastodon app, doesn't mean it's on or from Mastodon itself.
- In fact, that particular user might not be on Mastodon.
- Just because Mastodon rolls out a new feature, doesn't mean everything in the Fediverse rolls out the same feature at the same time. This means that there's a whole lot of Fediverse server software that does not offer alt-texts for profile pictures, and that probably won't offer them for quite a while or ever.
- Also, Mastodon's culture is not and will never be the culture of the whole Fediverse. Sorry, Mastodon fundamentalists, but some software has been here before Mastodon, its culture is older than Mastodon itself, and it's technologically incompatible with Mastodon's unwritten rules.
Here on Hubzilla, where I'm posting from right now (in case you really thought I'm on Mastodon just like you), there is no such thing as a dedicated field for alt-texts anywhere. Even if you want to post pictures, there is no alt-text entry mask, and there is no alt-text database field for the images.
Instead, both images and alt-texts are handled like on a blog: You embed the image somewhere in the post text using markup code. In a sense, you program the image into the post. And if you want the image to have alt-text, you have to program the alt-text into the image-embedding code. If you're afraid of coding, Hubzilla is not for you.
But if there's no entry mask and no database field for alt-texts in posts, there won't be either for the profile images either. That is, unless Hubzilla adopts the alt-text field from (streams) and Forte where alt-texts can be added to uploaded images in the Photo app so that they're automatically inserted whenever you embed an image in a message. Using that alt-text field for profile images should be trivial then.
If you want or need the images in my profile described: I don't have a description for my profile photo. For my cover photo, I actually have two. They're both in this post: https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/display/c796febd-8ce2-472b-a46b-23fdf6b16f18. One is in the alt-text which you probably can't open when you're on a phone; the alt-text is 1,500 characters long, a bit over 1,400 of which are visual description. The other one is in the post text itself. But you'd better have a lot of time at your hand because it's over 60,000 characters long, and it'll probably take you a few hours to read it.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Hubzilla #MastodonCulture #FediverseCulture #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity -
@TeflonTrout :bc: he/him @Sharp Leaves Still, forcing Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules upon literally everyone in the Fediverse is bad.
Maybe you haven't heard about this yet, but: The Fediverse is not only Mastodon. It has never been only Mastodon. It didn't even start with Mastodon. And it doesn't entirely work like Mastodon either.
For starters, this means that just because you see it on Mastodon, it didn't necessarily originate on Mastodon.
There are places in the Fediverse that are vastly older than Mastodon, and that are very different from Mastodon. Thus, they have their own culture, based on their own technology and their own features and where their users came from, and largely without any influences from Mastodon.
The oldest still existing server software in the Fediverse is not Mastodon from 2016. It's Friendica (https://friendi.ca, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendica, https://joinfediverse.wiki/Friendica). Friendica is essentially a mixture of a Facebook alternative and fully-featured long-form blogging. No Twitter or Mastodon influence anywhere. And Friendica first came out in May, 2010, five years and eight months before Mastodon.
Friendica did not intrude into the Mastodon Fediverse that was created by Eugen Rochko as a Mastodon-only network. Mastodon was born into an already existing Fediverse that consisted of at least Friendica, Hubzilla (https://hubzilla.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubzilla, https://joinfediverse.wiki/Hubzilla) and GNU social (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_social; now defunct).
Here's how Friendica differs from Mastodon in ways that may disturb Mastodon hardliners:- Mastodon is hard-coded to 500 characters. This character limit is deeply engrained into Mastodon's culture.
Friendica doesn't have an arbitrary character limit; it's limited by the maximum size of the database field for the post text. Currently, this is 16,777,215 characters. Thus, Friendica doesn't have keeping messages short in its culture, it never has, and it never will. - Mastodon users tend to be eager to block anyone who doesn't cut long posts into pieces of no more than 500 characters each.
I know at least one Friendica veteran who blocks everyone upon first strike who does cut long posts into annoying strings of tiny chunks. - Mastodon introduced a CW field in 2017.
Friendica has had the exact same field as a summary/abstract field since its own beginning in 2010. That, and Friendica has always had a much more efficient way of handling CWs, one that Mastodon itself adopted with version 4.0 in October, 2022. Thus, by its technology and culture, Friendica users despise misusing their abstract field to force the same CW upon everyone out there with a hot, flaming passion.
So if you see someone "misusing" the CW field for "a subject or a summary or whatever that is," that might not be a clueless Mastodon user. Instead, it might be a Friendica user who has been around for a dozen years longer than you, who is used to living by Friendica's culture, and who knows tons more about the Fediverse than you do. - Friendica users are much less likely to add alt-texts to their images. That's for two reasons.
One, Friendica's culture is not an idealised version of pre-Musk, very-left-wing Twitter's culture. It does not include attacking and punishing everyone who doesn't add 100% hand-written, 100% accurate, sufficiently detailed alt-texts to their images.
Two, Friendica handles images drastically differently from Mastodon. Mastodon always has a nifty little entry field for alt-texts whenever you attach an image. On Friendica, images are embedded into posts rather than attached to them, like in a blog post. And oftentimes, you literally have to program the alt-text into the raw image embedding markup code. - On Mastodon, it's considered intrusive and reply-guying to reply to someone who hasn't mentioned you, and to whom you aren't mutually connected. You couldn't possibly have received the toot that you're replying to otherwise.
On Friendica, that's perfectly normal. Friendica doesn't show you single messages by default. It always shows you the entire conversation thread, all the way up to the start post, with all branches. Thus, neither Friendica's technology nor Friendica's culture rules out replying to any comment in the thread. - Mastodon has only just introduced Twitter-style quote-posts a few months ago. With a safety feature that only works on Mastodon and GoToSocial for fear of that feature being used for harassment and dogpiling just like on Twitter. And because literally everyone on Mastodon comes from Twitter, it's actually being used for harassment and dogpiling.
Friendica has had that very same feature since its inception in 2010, over a decade and a half longer. It has never not had this feature. It has always been able to quote-post any public message in the Fediverse. But since Friendica is not entirely populated by former Twitter users, it hasn't been used for harassment or dogpiling even once. It's only used to forward content. For most of the time, it literally was the only available way to forward a message. - Mastodon users tend to be very protective and defensive about their allegedly Mastodon-only Fediverse.
Friendica users are used to being able to connect with everything that moves and then some. It's one of Friendica's key features that it speaks a whole lot of protocols, not just ActivityPub.
Whereas Mastodon users see Mastodon as a "decentralised walled garden", Friendica users see Friendica as the gateway to the whole federated social Web plus some places that aren't, strictly speaking, federated. - Mastodon users will staunchly insist that "Fediverse" and "Mastodon" essentially mean the same because they believe they do. They will attack anyone who claims otherwise.
Friendica users will staunchly insist that there's a huge difference between "Fediverse" and "Mastodon" because they actually know there is one. They will lecture anyone who claims otherwise.
Of course, from a Mastodon point of view, it's both tempting and fully justified to tell the Friendica users that this is the Mastodon Fediverse, and that they will have to adapt the Mastodon culture and abolish their own culture or be thrown out. But for one, Mastodon's culture doesn't fit Friendica's technology.
Besides, that'd literally be like European settlers holding Native Americans at gunpoint and forcing them to give up their own culture, adopt European culture and convert to Catholic Christianity or else. The only difference is that European settlers, unlike the Mastodon users, did not think that they were there first, and that everyone else is an intruder.
I mean, sure, go ahead and attack anyone who doesn't strictly live by Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's rules if you think you have to. But prepare for a whole lot of defence and even counter-attacks from Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, Iceshrimp-JS, Iceshrimp.NET, Sharkey, GoToSocial, Hollo, snac2, Mitra, Socialhome, Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams), Forte and the rest of the non-Mastodon Fediverse.
CC: @Jan Wildeboer
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #QuotePostDebate #QuoteTootDebate #Fediverse #Mastodon #Friendica #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse - Mastodon is hard-coded to 500 characters. This character limit is deeply engrained into Mastodon's culture.
-
@TeflonTrout :bc: he/him @Sharp Leaves Still, forcing Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules upon literally everyone in the Fediverse is bad.
Maybe you haven't heard about this yet, but: The Fediverse is not only Mastodon. It has never been only Mastodon. It didn't even start with Mastodon. And it doesn't entirely work like Mastodon either.
For starters, this means that just because you see it on Mastodon, it didn't necessarily originate on Mastodon.
There are places in the Fediverse that are vastly older than Mastodon, and that are very different from Mastodon. Thus, they have their own culture, based on their own technology and their own features and where their users came from, and largely without any influences from Mastodon.
The oldest still existing server software in the Fediverse is not Mastodon from 2016. It's Friendica (https://friendi.ca, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendica, https://joinfediverse.wiki/Friendica). Friendica is essentially a mixture of a Facebook alternative and fully-featured long-form blogging. No Twitter or Mastodon influence anywhere. And Friendica first came out in May, 2010, five years and eight months before Mastodon.
Friendica did not intrude into the Mastodon Fediverse that was created by Eugen Rochko as a Mastodon-only network. Mastodon was born into an already existing Fediverse that consisted of at least Friendica, Hubzilla (https://hubzilla.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubzilla, https://joinfediverse.wiki/Hubzilla) and GNU social (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_social; now defunct).
Here's how Friendica differs from Mastodon in ways that may disturb Mastodon hardliners:- Mastodon is hard-coded to 500 characters. This character limit is deeply engrained into Mastodon's culture.
Friendica doesn't have an arbitrary character limit; it's limited by the maximum size of the database field for the post text. Currently, this is 16,777,215 characters. Thus, Friendica doesn't have keeping messages short in its culture, it never has, and it never will. - Mastodon users tend to be eager to block anyone who doesn't cut long posts into pieces of no more than 500 characters each.
I know at least one Friendica veteran who blocks everyone upon first strike who does cut long posts into annoying strings of tiny chunks. - Mastodon introduced a CW field in 2017.
Friendica has had the exact same field as a summary/abstract field since its own beginning in 2010. That, and Friendica has always had a much more efficient way of handling CWs, one that Mastodon itself adopted with version 4.0 in October, 2022. Thus, by its technology and culture, Friendica users despise misusing their abstract field to force the same CW upon everyone out there with a hot, flaming passion.
So if you see someone "misusing" the CW field for "a subject or a summary or whatever that is," that might not be a clueless Mastodon user. Instead, it might be a Friendica user who has been around for a dozen years longer than you, who is used to living by Friendica's culture, and who knows tons more about the Fediverse than you do. - Friendica users are much less likely to add alt-texts to their images. That's for two reasons.
One, Friendica's culture is not an idealised version of pre-Musk, very-left-wing Twitter's culture. It does not include attacking and punishing everyone who doesn't add 100% hand-written, 100% accurate, sufficiently detailed alt-texts to their images.
Two, Friendica handles images drastically differently from Mastodon. Mastodon always has a nifty little entry field for alt-texts whenever you attach an image. On Friendica, images are embedded into posts rather than attached to them, like in a blog post. And oftentimes, you literally have to program the alt-text into the raw image embedding markup code. - On Mastodon, it's considered intrusive and reply-guying to reply to someone who hasn't mentioned you, and to whom you aren't mutually connected. You couldn't possibly have received the toot that you're replying to otherwise.
On Friendica, that's perfectly normal. Friendica doesn't show you single messages by default. It always shows you the entire conversation thread, all the way up to the start post, with all branches. Thus, neither Friendica's technology nor Friendica's culture rules out replying to any comment in the thread. - Mastodon has only just introduced Twitter-style quote-posts a few months ago. With a safety feature that only works on Mastodon and GoToSocial for fear of that feature being used for harassment and dogpiling just like on Twitter. And because literally everyone on Mastodon comes from Twitter, it's actually being used for harassment and dogpiling.
Friendica has had that very same feature since its inception in 2010, over a decade and a half longer. It has never not had this feature. It has always been able to quote-post any public message in the Fediverse. But since Friendica is not entirely populated by former Twitter users, it hasn't been used for harassment or dogpiling even once. It's only used to forward content. For most of the time, it literally was the only available way to forward a message. - Mastodon users tend to be very protective and defensive about their allegedly Mastodon-only Fediverse.
Friendica users are used to being able to connect with everything that moves and then some. It's one of Friendica's key features that it speaks a whole lot of protocols, not just ActivityPub.
Whereas Mastodon users see Mastodon as a "decentralised walled garden", Friendica users see Friendica as the gateway to the whole federated social Web plus some places that aren't, strictly speaking, federated. - Mastodon users will staunchly insist that "Fediverse" and "Mastodon" essentially mean the same because they believe they do. They will attack anyone who claims otherwise.
Friendica users will staunchly insist that there's a huge difference between "Fediverse" and "Mastodon" because they actually know there is one. They will lecture anyone who claims otherwise.
Of course, from a Mastodon point of view, it's both tempting and fully justified to tell the Friendica users that this is the Mastodon Fediverse, and that they will have to adapt the Mastodon culture and abolish their own culture or be thrown out. But for one, Mastodon's culture doesn't fit Friendica's technology.
Besides, that'd literally be like European settlers holding Native Americans at gunpoint and forcing them to give up their own culture, adopt European culture and convert to Catholic Christianity or else. The only difference is that European settlers, unlike the Mastodon users, did not think that they were there first, and that everyone else is an intruder.
I mean, sure, go ahead and attack anyone who doesn't strictly live by Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's rules if you think you have to. But prepare for a whole lot of defence and even counter-attacks from Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, Iceshrimp-JS, Iceshrimp.NET, Sharkey, GoToSocial, Hollo, snac2, Mitra, Socialhome, Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams), Forte and the rest of the non-Mastodon Fediverse.
CC: @Jan Wildeboer
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #QuotePostDebate #QuoteTootDebate #Fediverse #Mastodon #Friendica #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse - Mastodon is hard-coded to 500 characters. This character limit is deeply engrained into Mastodon's culture.
-
@🌱🏴🅰️🏳️⚧️🐧🔧📎 Ambiyelp Let me give you an example. Something that I've actually posted myself.
Here's the image (CW: eye contact): https://streams.elsmussols.net/photos/jupiter_rowland/image/ff28c33e-f633-4801-ad2b-c3dcd40d7bf9
Here's the alt-text:Image macro, based on a screen capture from the Disney and Pixar animated film Finding Nemo. At the top, there is a white space with a two-line caption: “OSgrid: offline for weeks to come,” and “Owners of other grids, looking at OSgrid residents:”. In the screen capture below, ten seagulls are perched on two mooring lines in the background. An eleventh seagull pokes its head into the image from the bottom right. They all look at the camera. Each one is labelled with the question, “Mine?”
Do you understand the image without explanations?
I guarantee you that there are loads of people who don't even understand the template, and that next to nobody out there understands the topic. Not without an explanation.
So here's the explanation in the post text, including a link to the corresponding KnowYourMeme page:Explanation:
The image macro is based on the "Mine? Mine? Mine? Seagulls" meme template (link CW: eye contact; https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/mine-mine-mine-seagulls).
OSgrid (https://osgrid.org) is a 3-D virtual world, based on OpenSimulator (http://opensimulator.org; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSimulator; https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/ba1b1cb6-7c18-410e-8752-df4b4face2e0), a free, open-source server-side re-implementation of the technology of Second Life (https://www.secondlife.com; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life). Like Second Life and all other OpenSimulator-based worlds, it is called a "grid" because it is divided into square regions bordering on each other.
Launched in July, 2007, OSgrid was the first public OpenSimulator grid, it is the oldest and one of the biggest by both land area and users. This means that while it's running bleeding-edge developer versions of OpenSimulator, it also carries around a whole lot of old ballast. It is notorious for going offline for maintenance and for this maintenance often lasting for a week or several, and it is just as notorious for going offline with no announcement and either only a very belated explanation by the admins or none at all.
The last prolonged downtime before this one was in 2025. It included OSgrid's entire asset server being wiped clean, and all avatars in OSgrid having their inventories emptied almost completely. It was scheduled, but due to OSgrid's instability at the time, it happened spontaneously and way ahead of schedule. The OSgrid admins could not say for how long OSgrid would be offline, but they estimated the downtime to exceed one month. In addition, for several years before that shutdown, each OSgrid shutdown had led to more and more lost assets already.
This drove many OSgrid residents away from OSgrid and to other OpenSimulator grids. Most of them, OSgrid included, are connected by the so-called Hypergrid which makes it possible for avatars from one grid to teleport to other grids, so it doesn't matter much which grid your avatar is registered on when you want to travel to certain locations or events. Many of those who had left OSgrid when it was offline returned after it went online again because the asset server had been promised to work as intended now.
Still, with OSgrid's track record of unreliability and, most importantly, losing assets, some residents fear that the current downtime might break more than it will fix. Not few think that if they've lost their whole inventories "unannounced" last time, they will lose their whole inventories actually unannounced this time. And so they're looking for a new home again.
Of course, this has the owners and admins of many other grids wishing for as many OSgrid residents as possible to join their grids. The advertising of other grids in the wake of OSgrid's downtime has already begun.
Now, there are people who say that linking to external explanations is ableist crap because that's inconvenient, and because these external websites may not be sufficiently accessible. Oh, and links don't work in alt-text (only that the above link went into the post text where links do work). So if you post something that needs to be explained, explain it yourself.
Sure, but that'll be an explanation of the "Mine? Mine? Mine? Seagulls" meme template. In addition, there will have to be one explanation for Reddit and one for reaction images because people won't understand the template explanation otherwise. On top of that, there will have to be an explanation for image boards, Futaba Channel and 4chan because people won't understand the reaction image explanation otherwise. In fact, I might also have to explain the film Finding Nemo.
For comparison, I've once posted something based on "One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor". It was the only time I've explained the whole thing myself. That was one explanation for my image, six for the template, two for the topic (and that was actually Fediverse-related, but still obscure), that's nine altogether. I haven't even explained The Lord of the Rings, the character Boromir and that particular situation. Still, that was 25,000 characters of explanation overall, half of which accounted for the six explanations for the template.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Ableist #Ableism #AbleismMeta #CWAbleismMeta -
@🌱🏴🅰️🏳️⚧️🐧🔧📎 Ambiyelp Let me give you an example. Something that I've actually posted myself.
Here's the image (CW: eye contact): https://streams.elsmussols.net/photos/jupiter_rowland/image/ff28c33e-f633-4801-ad2b-c3dcd40d7bf9
Here's the alt-text:Image macro, based on a screen capture from the Disney and Pixar animated film Finding Nemo. At the top, there is a white space with a two-line caption: “OSgrid: offline for weeks to come,” and “Owners of other grids, looking at OSgrid residents:”. In the screen capture below, ten seagulls are perched on two mooring lines in the background. An eleventh seagull pokes its head into the image from the bottom right. They all look at the camera. Each one is labelled with the question, “Mine?”
Do you understand the image without explanations?
I guarantee you that there are loads of people who don't even understand the template, and that next to nobody out there understands the topic. Not without an explanation.
So here's the explanation in the post text, including a link to the corresponding KnowYourMeme page:Explanation:
The image macro is based on the "Mine? Mine? Mine? Seagulls" meme template (link CW: eye contact; https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/mine-mine-mine-seagulls).
OSgrid (https://osgrid.org) is a 3-D virtual world, based on OpenSimulator (http://opensimulator.org; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSimulator; https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/ba1b1cb6-7c18-410e-8752-df4b4face2e0), a free, open-source server-side re-implementation of the technology of Second Life (https://www.secondlife.com; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life). Like Second Life and all other OpenSimulator-based worlds, it is called a "grid" because it is divided into square regions bordering on each other.
Launched in July, 2007, OSgrid was the first public OpenSimulator grid, it is the oldest and one of the biggest by both land area and users. This means that while it's running bleeding-edge developer versions of OpenSimulator, it also carries around a whole lot of old ballast. It is notorious for going offline for maintenance and for this maintenance often lasting for a week or several, and it is just as notorious for going offline with no announcement and either only a very belated explanation by the admins or none at all.
The last prolonged downtime before this one was in 2025. It included OSgrid's entire asset server being wiped clean, and all avatars in OSgrid having their inventories emptied almost completely. It was scheduled, but due to OSgrid's instability at the time, it happened spontaneously and way ahead of schedule. The OSgrid admins could not say for how long OSgrid would be offline, but they estimated the downtime to exceed one month. In addition, for several years before that shutdown, each OSgrid shutdown had led to more and more lost assets already.
This drove many OSgrid residents away from OSgrid and to other OpenSimulator grids. Most of them, OSgrid included, are connected by the so-called Hypergrid which makes it possible for avatars from one grid to teleport to other grids, so it doesn't matter much which grid your avatar is registered on when you want to travel to certain locations or events. Many of those who had left OSgrid when it was offline returned after it went online again because the asset server had been promised to work as intended now.
Still, with OSgrid's track record of unreliability and, most importantly, losing assets, some residents fear that the current downtime might break more than it will fix. Not few think that if they've lost their whole inventories "unannounced" last time, they will lose their whole inventories actually unannounced this time. And so they're looking for a new home again.
Of course, this has the owners and admins of many other grids wishing for as many OSgrid residents as possible to join their grids. The advertising of other grids in the wake of OSgrid's downtime has already begun.
Now, there are people who say that linking to external explanations is ableist crap because that's inconvenient, and because these external websites may not be sufficiently accessible. Oh, and links don't work in alt-text (only that the above link went into the post text where links do work). So if you post something that needs to be explained, explain it yourself.
Sure, but that'll be an explanation of the "Mine? Mine? Mine? Seagulls" meme template. In addition, there will have to be one explanation for Reddit and one for reaction images because people won't understand the template explanation otherwise. On top of that, there will have to be an explanation for image boards, Futaba Channel and 4chan because people won't understand the reaction image explanation otherwise. In fact, I might also have to explain the film Finding Nemo.
For comparison, I've once posted something based on "One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor". It was the only time I've explained the whole thing myself. That was one explanation for my image, six for the template, two for the topic (and that was actually Fediverse-related, but still obscure), that's nine altogether. I haven't even explained The Lord of the Rings, the character Boromir and that particular situation. Still, that was 25,000 characters of explanation overall, half of which accounted for the six explanations for the template.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Ableist #Ableism #AbleismMeta #CWAbleismMeta -
@🌱🏴🅰️🏳️⚧️🐧🔧📎 Ambiyelp I'm not talking about the visual description in the alt-text.
I'm talking about a wholly separate explanation in the post text body. Like, where you'd write the actual toot. Where you probably only have 500 characters. Where you wrote the above comment. It's there where I want to put the explanation.
The story behind this is as follows:
I keep reading from Mastodon users that alt-texts (yes, actual alt-texts in this case) are useful for sighted people, too, because alt-texts can give them explanations and help them understand what they're looking at. This means that images must not only be described, but also explained if necessary.
On the one hand, I keep telling Mastodon users again and again that explanations do not belong into the alt-text because there are people who can't access and read alt-texts; Mastodon users tend to be very defensive of using alt-texts to extend their 500-character limit by another 1,500 characters per image.
Still, on the other hand, this means that especially Mastodon users want images that they don't understand to come with explanations right away. In particular, neurodivergent people often need explanations, in-depth explanations even. It appears to have gotten to a point where posting an image that needs explanations without explanations is considered just as careless and almost as ableist as posting an image without accurate and sufficiently detailed alt-text.
At the same time, whenever I post an image of any kind, memes included, they're about such obscure topics that they need an explanation. Also, not everyone is always familiar with every meme template, so I have to give an explanation for the meme templates I've used as well. So I always explain whatever might need to be explained.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Ableist #Ableism #AbleismMeta #CWAbleismMeta -
@🌱🏴🅰️🏳️⚧️🐧🔧📎 Ambiyelp I'm not talking about the visual description in the alt-text.
I'm talking about a wholly separate explanation in the post text body. Like, where you'd write the actual toot. Where you probably only have 500 characters. Where you wrote the above comment. It's there where I want to put the explanation.
The story behind this is as follows:
I keep reading from Mastodon users that alt-texts (yes, actual alt-texts in this case) are useful for sighted people, too, because alt-texts can give them explanations and help them understand what they're looking at. This means that images must not only be described, but also explained if necessary.
On the one hand, I keep telling Mastodon users again and again that explanations do not belong into the alt-text because there are people who can't access and read alt-texts; Mastodon users tend to be very defensive of using alt-texts to extend their 500-character limit by another 1,500 characters per image.
Still, on the other hand, this means that especially Mastodon users want images that they don't understand to come with explanations right away. In particular, neurodivergent people often need explanations, in-depth explanations even. It appears to have gotten to a point where posting an image that needs explanations without explanations is considered just as careless and almost as ableist as posting an image without accurate and sufficiently detailed alt-text.
At the same time, whenever I post an image of any kind, memes included, they're about such obscure topics that they need an explanation. Also, not everyone is always familiar with every meme template, so I have to give an explanation for the meme templates I've used as well. So I always explain whatever might need to be explained.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Ableist #Ableism #AbleismMeta #CWAbleismMeta -
@DerSensibleMaulwurf 🧑🦯➡️🇫🇷 Was ich heute anders machen würde:
Ich würde die Alt-Texte auf maximal 512 Zeichen begrenzen. Das liegt daran, daß Misskey und seine Forks wie Sharkey oder das alte Iceshrimp eine Alt-Text-Zeichenbegrenzung von 512 haben. Normalerweise sollten sie längere Alt-Texte einfach abschneiden. Sie haben da aber einen Bug und löschen längere Alt-Texte komplett.
#AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta -
@DerSensibleMaulwurf 🧑🦯➡️🇫🇷 Was ich heute anders machen würde:
Ich würde die Alt-Texte auf maximal 512 Zeichen begrenzen. Das liegt daran, daß Misskey und seine Forks wie Sharkey oder das alte Iceshrimp eine Alt-Text-Zeichenbegrenzung von 512 haben. Normalerweise sollten sie längere Alt-Texte einfach abschneiden. Sie haben da aber einen Bug und löschen längere Alt-Texte komplett.
#AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta -
@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 -
@Aljoscha Rittner (beandev)* Bildbeschreibungen sollten beim Bild sein, nicht nur als Reply. Also sollte ein Autor den Text in den Ursprung-Post kopieren.
Was auch bedeutet, daß, wenn man eine zusätzliche Bildbeschreibung in den Post-Text tun will (z. B., weil man noch eine längere Bildbeschreibung braucht, oder weil Veronica Lewis a.k.a. Veronica with Four Eyes das empfiehlt), man diese zusätzliche Bildbeschreibung nicht auf einen Thread ausdehnen darf. Sie muß zwingend komplett in den Post passen, in dem auch das Bild ist.
Damit sind natürlich Langbeschreibungen auf Mastodon nicht machbar und je nach Länge auch bei einigen anderen auf Microblogging ausgerichteten Serveranwendungen nicht.* Beschreibungen des Bots sind oft nicht hinreichend oder irreführend. Also nicht nur kopieren, sondern auch anpassen
Das sowieso. Ich weiß aus eigener Erfahrung, wie lückenhaft und fehlerhaft KI-Bildbeschreibungen oft sind.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #Bildbeschreibung #Bildbeschreibungen #BildbeschreibungenMeta #CWBildbeschreibungenMeta -
@Tom Cole Only that this "little extra treat" is inaccessible and lost to all those who cannot access alt-text. And yes, there are people who cannot access alt-text.
#AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #A11y #Accessibility -
@Tom Cole Only that this "little extra treat" is inaccessible and lost to all those who cannot access alt-text. And yes, there are people who cannot access alt-text.
#AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #A11y #Accessibility -
@hauch Ist man eigentlich weiter "links", wenn man beim Beschreiben von Bildern Dutzende und Aberdutzende Regeln und Richtlinien zur Hand nimmt und versucht, sie alle auf einmal zu erfüllen? Egal, wie groß der Aufwand wird?
Oder ist man weiter "links", wenn man ein Anarcho ist, beim Beschreiben von Bildern auf Regeln pfeift und einfach frei Schnauze schreibt?
#AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #Bildbeschreibung #Bildbeschreibungen #BildbeschreibungenMeta #CWBildbeschreibungenMeta -
@hauch Ist man eigentlich weiter "links", wenn man beim Beschreiben von Bildern Dutzende und Aberdutzende Regeln und Richtlinien zur Hand nimmt und versucht, sie alle auf einmal zu erfüllen? Egal, wie groß der Aufwand wird?
Oder ist man weiter "links", wenn man ein Anarcho ist, beim Beschreiben von Bildern auf Regeln pfeift und einfach frei Schnauze schreibt?
#AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #Bildbeschreibung #Bildbeschreibungen #BildbeschreibungenMeta #CWBildbeschreibungenMeta -
@h0uz3 @Aljoscha Rittner (beandev) Das hängt stark vom Aufwand ab, den man sich macht, und davon, wieviele Gedanken man sich beim Beschreiben der eigenen Bilder macht.
Nicht jeder ist zufrieden mit einem ganz kurzen Alt-Text, der 20 Sekunden auf einer Handytastatur gebraucht hat, als einziger Beschreibung des Bildes. Und nicht bei jedem Bild ist ein kurzer 20-Sekunden-Alt-Text absolut ausreichend.
Ich selbst poste nur drei Arten von Bildern (Suchen zwecklos, auf diesem Kanal, von dem ich hier jetzt gerade kommentiere, poste ich überhaupt keine Bilder mehr):- Memes über das Fediverse
- Memes über virtuelle Welten
- Renderings aus sehr obskuren, fast komplett unbekannten virtuellen Welten
Bei den Memes mache ich mir schon etwas Gedanken über die rein visuelle Beschreibung, die dann in den Alt-Text geht. Das hält sich aber in Grenzen. Die notwendigen Erklärungen im Post-Text sind es, die das Posten von Memes aufwendig machen.
Bei den Bildern aus virtuellen Welten muß ich einen noch deutlich höheren Aufwand betreiben: Im Post-Text gibt es nicht einfach nur Erklärungen, sondern eine zweite, volldetaillierte visuelle Bildbeschreibung, die die notwendigen Erklärungen und mitunter auch etliche Text-Transkripte enthält. Auch die "kurze" visuelle Beschreibung im Alt-Text neigte früher dazu, sehr lang zu werden; in Zukunft werde ich meine Alt-Texte auf maximal 512 Zeichen beschränken, damit Misskey und die Forkeys sie nicht löschen.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #Bildbeschreibung #Bildbeschreibungen #BildbeschreibungenMeta #CWBildbeschreibungenMeta -
@h0uz3 @Aljoscha Rittner (beandev) Das hängt stark vom Aufwand ab, den man sich macht, und davon, wieviele Gedanken man sich beim Beschreiben der eigenen Bilder macht.
Nicht jeder ist zufrieden mit einem ganz kurzen Alt-Text, der 20 Sekunden auf einer Handytastatur gebraucht hat, als einziger Beschreibung des Bildes. Und nicht bei jedem Bild ist ein kurzer 20-Sekunden-Alt-Text absolut ausreichend.
Ich selbst poste nur drei Arten von Bildern (Suchen zwecklos, auf diesem Kanal, von dem ich hier jetzt gerade kommentiere, poste ich überhaupt keine Bilder mehr):- Memes über das Fediverse
- Memes über virtuelle Welten
- Renderings aus sehr obskuren, fast komplett unbekannten virtuellen Welten
Bei den Memes mache ich mir schon etwas Gedanken über die rein visuelle Beschreibung, die dann in den Alt-Text geht. Das hält sich aber in Grenzen. Die notwendigen Erklärungen im Post-Text sind es, die das Posten von Memes aufwendig machen.
Bei den Bildern aus virtuellen Welten muß ich einen noch deutlich höheren Aufwand betreiben: Im Post-Text gibt es nicht einfach nur Erklärungen, sondern eine zweite, volldetaillierte visuelle Bildbeschreibung, die die notwendigen Erklärungen und mitunter auch etliche Text-Transkripte enthält. Auch die "kurze" visuelle Beschreibung im Alt-Text neigte früher dazu, sehr lang zu werden; in Zukunft werde ich meine Alt-Texte auf maximal 512 Zeichen beschränken, damit Misskey und die Forkeys sie nicht löschen.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #Bildbeschreibung #Bildbeschreibungen #BildbeschreibungenMeta #CWBildbeschreibungenMeta -
@Expertenkommision Cyberunfall @Aljoscha Rittner (beandev) Na ja, auf der einen Seite beispielsweise werden komplette Neulinge, aus deren Profil hervorgeht, daß sie erst seit ein paar Tagen dabei sind, als ableistisch beschimpft, weil sie zweimal Bilder gepostet haben ohne Beschreibung.
Dieses Kommunikationsproblem ist inzwischen so schlimm, daß es Server gibt, die in ihren Regeln stehen haben, daß Nichtmoderatoren sich nicht als irgendwelche Regelpolizei aufspielen dürfen. Daß Regeln a) nur von Moderatoren und b) nur gegenüber denen auf demselben Server durchgesetzt werden dürfen. Und weder von jedem noch gegenüber jedem.
Das heißt, wenn man jetzt als Mastodon-Nutzer z. B. einen Hubzilla-Nutzer zusammenscheißt, weil der sich nicht exakt an die Mastodon-Kultur, die ungeschriebenen Mastodon-Regeln und die eigenen Serverregeln hält, dann kann man auf einigen Servern dafür selbst auf den Deckel kriegen.
Andererseits bekommt man aber auch immer mal wieder Gegenwind von Leuten, denen man auch nur Vorschläge macht, wie Bildbeschreibungen allgemein und Alt-Texte ganz speziell (nein, das ist nicht dasselbe) besser gemacht werden können. Meines Erachtens kriegt man den sogar von beinharten Alt-Text-Polizisten, die sich umgekehrt auf gar keinen Fall sagen lassen wollen, wie sie selbst ihre Alt-Texte zu schreiben haben, geschweige denn, daß ihre Alt-Texte verbesserungswürdig sind.
Ich schätze, ein Problem ist, daß Mastodon-Neulingen das Fediverse nicht nur als in sich geschlossenes reines Mastodon-Netzwerk verkauft wird, sondern auch als große flauschige Kuschelecke, in der sich im Gegensatz zum Vogelkäfig alle immer ganz doll lieb haben. Wenn man mit dem Mindset ans Fediverse herangeht, dann ist sogar konstruktive Kritik auf einmal übergriffig, wenn man sie bekommt. Gleichzeitig darf man selbst so hart austeilen, wie man will, wenn es dazu dient, die eigenen Idealvorstellungen vom Fediverse durchzusetzen, nämlich genau diese Nur-Mastodon-Kuschelecke.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NichtNurMastodon #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #Bildbeschreibung #Bildbeschreibungen #BildbeschreibungenMeta #CWBildbeschreibungenMeta #MastodonKultur -
@Expertenkommision Cyberunfall @Aljoscha Rittner (beandev) Na ja, auf der einen Seite beispielsweise werden komplette Neulinge, aus deren Profil hervorgeht, daß sie erst seit ein paar Tagen dabei sind, als ableistisch beschimpft, weil sie zweimal Bilder gepostet haben ohne Beschreibung.
Dieses Kommunikationsproblem ist inzwischen so schlimm, daß es Server gibt, die in ihren Regeln stehen haben, daß Nichtmoderatoren sich nicht als irgendwelche Regelpolizei aufspielen dürfen. Daß Regeln a) nur von Moderatoren und b) nur gegenüber denen auf demselben Server durchgesetzt werden dürfen. Und weder von jedem noch gegenüber jedem.
Das heißt, wenn man jetzt als Mastodon-Nutzer z. B. einen Hubzilla-Nutzer zusammenscheißt, weil der sich nicht exakt an die Mastodon-Kultur, die ungeschriebenen Mastodon-Regeln und die eigenen Serverregeln hält, dann kann man auf einigen Servern dafür selbst auf den Deckel kriegen.
Andererseits bekommt man aber auch immer mal wieder Gegenwind von Leuten, denen man auch nur Vorschläge macht, wie Bildbeschreibungen allgemein und Alt-Texte ganz speziell (nein, das ist nicht dasselbe) besser gemacht werden können. Meines Erachtens kriegt man den sogar von beinharten Alt-Text-Polizisten, die sich umgekehrt auf gar keinen Fall sagen lassen wollen, wie sie selbst ihre Alt-Texte zu schreiben haben, geschweige denn, daß ihre Alt-Texte verbesserungswürdig sind.
Ich schätze, ein Problem ist, daß Mastodon-Neulingen das Fediverse nicht nur als in sich geschlossenes reines Mastodon-Netzwerk verkauft wird, sondern auch als große flauschige Kuschelecke, in der sich im Gegensatz zum Vogelkäfig alle immer ganz doll lieb haben. Wenn man mit dem Mindset ans Fediverse herangeht, dann ist sogar konstruktive Kritik auf einmal übergriffig, wenn man sie bekommt. Gleichzeitig darf man selbst so hart austeilen, wie man will, wenn es dazu dient, die eigenen Idealvorstellungen vom Fediverse durchzusetzen, nämlich genau diese Nur-Mastodon-Kuschelecke.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NichtNurMastodon #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #Bildbeschreibung #Bildbeschreibungen #BildbeschreibungenMeta #CWBildbeschreibungenMeta #MastodonKultur -
@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 -
@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: Gute Bildbeschreibungen bringen einen sehr viel größeren Aufwand mit sich, als ihr vielleicht glaubt; CW: lang (über 6.000 Zeichen), Fediverse-Meta, Fediverse-über-Mastodon-hinaus-Meta, Zeichenlimit-Meta, Inhaltswarnungen-Meta/Content-Warning-Meta, Hashtag-Meta, Alt-Text-Meta, Bildbeschreibungen-Meta, KI erwähnt (KI-)
(Ausnahmsweise auch mal auf Deutsch. Die englische Version ist hier.)
Bildbeschreibungen sind wichtig im Fediverse, zumindest wenn eure Posts möglicherweise auf Mastodon landen werden. Aber geht es nur um Bildbeschreibungen ganz allgemein? Geht es nur darum, überhaupt Bildbeschreibungen zu haben? Oder geht es auch um die Qualität der Bildbeschreibungen?
Blinde oder sehbehinderte Nutzer sagen, daß alles besser ist als nichts. Aber seien wir mal ehrlich, der Dateiname der Bilddatei als Alt-Text ist nutzlos. Eine Kopie des Post-Texts im Alt-Text auch; mindestens eine Handy-App für Mastodon macht das scheinbar automatisch. Irgendwelcher Kauderwelsch, der in den Alt-Text reingeschrieben wird, damit da irgendein Alt-Text steht, ist auch nutzlos.
Also schreibt ihr eine kurze Bildbeschreibung für euren Alt-Text. Das sollte viel besser sein als nichts.
Und dann werdet ihr kritisiert und sanktioniert, weil eure Bildbeschreibung nicht detailliert genug ist.
Weil ihr eine längere Bildbeschreibung nicht schreiben könnt oder wollt, überlaßt ihr das einer KI.
Und dann werdet ihr kritisiert und sanktioniert, weil eure Bildbeschreibung offensichtlicher KI-Slop ist. Die KI ist ungenau, sie halluziniert, sie identifizert Sachen falsch, und sie läßt immer noch Details aus.
Okay, also setzt ihr euch hin und steckt einen Haufen Zeit und Aufwand in eine handgeschriebene Bildbeschreibung, die gleichermaßen akkurat und detailliert ist. Zumindest glaubt ihr das.
Und es könnte immer noch jemand kommen und euch kritisieren und/oder sanktionieren, weil ihr bestimmte Details ausgelassen habt.
Wenn ihr eure Bildbeschreibung nicht zu deren Zufriedenheit in Ordnung bringt, dann werdet ihr als ableistisch beschimpft und blockiert mit öffentlichem Trara, damit möglichst viele andere Nutzer euch auch blockieren mögen.
Nun entwickeln sich die Mindestanforderungen für Bildbeschreibungen über die Jahre immer weiter. Was heute wichtig ist, war vor zwei Jahren nicht unbedingt wichtig. Was heute unwichtig ist, kann in zwei oder fünf Jahren durchaus auf einmal wichtig sein. Heute schon kritisieren Alt-Text-Aktivisten Bildposts, die schon etliche Jahre alt sind, aufgrund von deren Bildbeschreibungen, die sie als suboptimal ansehen. Das bedeutet, daß die Bildbeschreibungen, die ihr heute schreibt, noch so lange gut genug bleiben müssen, wie eure Bilderposts verfügbar bleiben. Falls nicht, viel Spaß dabei, durch alle eure alten Bilderposts zu gehen, sie alle zu editieren und bei allen die Bildbeschreibungen an die aktuellen Mindestanforderungen anzupassen.
Es gibt nur eine Möglichkeit, langfristig vor Mastodons Alt-Text-Polizei sicher zu sein: Als allererstes müßt ihr euch aufschlauen über die vielen Regeln und Richtlinien für Alt-Texte und Bildbeschreibungen, und darüber gibt's dutzendweise englischsprachige Websites. Man kann unmöglich im voraus wissen, welche dieser Regeln von irgendjemandem bei der Alt-Text-Polizei irgendwann in der Zukunft für zwingend erforderlich erklärt werden, also solltet ihr sie jetzt schon bis aufs i-Tüpfelchen einhalten. Wenn zwei davon sich gegenseitig widersprechen, müßt ihr natürlich wissen, welche davon ihr einzuhalten habt.
Ihr müßt auch wissen, daß die Anforderungen und Qualitätsstandards für gute Alt-Texte und Bildbeschreibungen auf Mastodon ganz andere sind als im ganzen Rest des Web. Was fürs Web gut genug ist, ist nicht zwingend auch gut genug für Mastodon.
Zu guter Letzt müßt ihr euer Publikum kennen. Und normalerweise kann jeder irgendwo im Fediverse oder sogar im Web euer Publikum sein. Es gibt nur ganz wenige Orte im Fediverse, wo ihr steuern könnt, wer in der Lage sein wird, euer Zeugs zu lesen, und Mastodon gehört nicht dazu. Ihr müßt euer Publikum kennen, und ihr müßt zumindest einschätzen können, was euer Publikum über den Inhalt eures Bildes weiß, was es nicht weiß und was es wissen muß. Wenn euer Publikum nicht zwingend weiß, was etwas ist, erklärt es, aber bitte im Post-Text und nicht im Alt-Text! Wenn euer Publikum nicht zwingend weiß, wie etwas aussieht, das aber vielleicht wissen will, dann beschreibt es.
Bei meinen eigenen Bildern ist meine Strategie, für jedes Bild zwei Beschreibungen zu schreiben. Die eine ist die kurze Bildbeschreibung; die kommt in den Alt-Text. Die werde ich in Zukunft auf maximal 512 Zeichen beschränken, weil Misskey und seine Forks Alt-Texte, die länger als 512 Zeichen sind, löschen. Die andere ist die lange Bildbeschreibung; die kommt in den Post-Text. Die lange Bildbeschreibung ist volldetailliert, sie enthält alle Erklärungen, die zum Verständnis des Bildes und seiner Beschreibungen nötig sind, und sie enthält Transkripte von jedem einzelnen Stück Text, das es irgendwo innerhalb der Grenzen des Bildes gibt, egal, ob auf dem Bild lesbar oder nicht.
Memes zu posten, ist ein Stück weit einfacher. Es gibt nur eine Bildbeschreibung, die hoffentlich kurz genug für den Alt-Text ist. Aber trotzdem habe ich einen ganzen Haufen Sachen zu erklären, und weil ich mich nicht immer auf Links wie nach KnowYourMeme verlassen kann, muß ich oft selbst eine ganze Menge Erklärungen in den Post schreiben.
Idealerweise ist das Schlimmste, was mir passieren kann, daß ich dafür kritisiert werde, daß mein Alt-Text die 200-Zeichen-Marke oder mein Post die 500-Zeichen-Marke überschreitet, oder daß ich für das Letztere blockiert werde. Das Risiko, daß das passiert, reduziere ich mit einer Zusammenfassung, die eine Langer-Post-Inhaltswarnung mit der ungefähren Länge des Post enthält, und den Hashtags #Long, #LongPost, #CWLong, #CWLongPost, #LangerPost und #CWLangerPost, die dann gefiltert werden können.
Aber ich hoffe, daß keiner sagen kann, ich hätte mich nicht genug angestrengt.
#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Zeichenlimit #Zeichenlimits #ZeichenlimitMeta #CWZeichenlimitMeta #500Zeichen #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #Bildbeschreibung #Bildbeschreibungen #BildbeschreibungenMeta #CWBildbeschreibungenMeta -
CW: Gute Bildbeschreibungen bringen einen sehr viel größeren Aufwand mit sich, als ihr vielleicht glaubt; CW: lang (über 6.000 Zeichen), Fediverse-Meta, Fediverse-über-Mastodon-hinaus-Meta, Zeichenlimit-Meta, Inhaltswarnungen-Meta/Content-Warning-Meta, Hashtag-Meta, Alt-Text-Meta, Bildbeschreibungen-Meta, KI erwähnt (KI-)
(Ausnahmsweise auch mal auf Deutsch. Die englische Version ist hier.)
Bildbeschreibungen sind wichtig im Fediverse, zumindest wenn eure Posts möglicherweise auf Mastodon landen werden. Aber geht es nur um Bildbeschreibungen ganz allgemein? Geht es nur darum, überhaupt Bildbeschreibungen zu haben? Oder geht es auch um die Qualität der Bildbeschreibungen?
Blinde oder sehbehinderte Nutzer sagen, daß alles besser ist als nichts. Aber seien wir mal ehrlich, der Dateiname der Bilddatei als Alt-Text ist nutzlos. Eine Kopie des Post-Texts im Alt-Text auch; mindestens eine Handy-App für Mastodon macht das scheinbar automatisch. Irgendwelcher Kauderwelsch, der in den Alt-Text reingeschrieben wird, damit da irgendein Alt-Text steht, ist auch nutzlos.
Also schreibt ihr eine kurze Bildbeschreibung für euren Alt-Text. Das sollte viel besser sein als nichts.
Und dann werdet ihr kritisiert und sanktioniert, weil eure Bildbeschreibung nicht detailliert genug ist.
Weil ihr eine längere Bildbeschreibung nicht schreiben könnt oder wollt, überlaßt ihr das einer KI.
Und dann werdet ihr kritisiert und sanktioniert, weil eure Bildbeschreibung offensichtlicher KI-Slop ist. Die KI ist ungenau, sie halluziniert, sie identifizert Sachen falsch, und sie läßt immer noch Details aus.
Okay, also setzt ihr euch hin und steckt einen Haufen Zeit und Aufwand in eine handgeschriebene Bildbeschreibung, die gleichermaßen akkurat und detailliert ist. Zumindest glaubt ihr das.
Und es könnte immer noch jemand kommen und euch kritisieren und/oder sanktionieren, weil ihr bestimmte Details ausgelassen habt.
Wenn ihr eure Bildbeschreibung nicht zu deren Zufriedenheit in Ordnung bringt, dann werdet ihr als ableistisch beschimpft und blockiert mit öffentlichem Trara, damit möglichst viele andere Nutzer euch auch blockieren mögen.
Nun entwickeln sich die Mindestanforderungen für Bildbeschreibungen über die Jahre immer weiter. Was heute wichtig ist, war vor zwei Jahren nicht unbedingt wichtig. Was heute unwichtig ist, kann in zwei oder fünf Jahren durchaus auf einmal wichtig sein. Heute schon kritisieren Alt-Text-Aktivisten Bildposts, die schon etliche Jahre alt sind, aufgrund von deren Bildbeschreibungen, die sie als suboptimal ansehen. Das bedeutet, daß die Bildbeschreibungen, die ihr heute schreibt, noch so lange gut genug bleiben müssen, wie eure Bilderposts verfügbar bleiben. Falls nicht, viel Spaß dabei, durch alle eure alten Bilderposts zu gehen, sie alle zu editieren und bei allen die Bildbeschreibungen an die aktuellen Mindestanforderungen anzupassen.
Es gibt nur eine Möglichkeit, langfristig vor Mastodons Alt-Text-Polizei sicher zu sein: Als allererstes müßt ihr euch aufschlauen über die vielen Regeln und Richtlinien für Alt-Texte und Bildbeschreibungen, und darüber gibt's dutzendweise englischsprachige Websites. Man kann unmöglich im voraus wissen, welche dieser Regeln von irgendjemandem bei der Alt-Text-Polizei irgendwann in der Zukunft für zwingend erforderlich erklärt werden, also solltet ihr sie jetzt schon bis aufs i-Tüpfelchen einhalten. Wenn zwei davon sich gegenseitig widersprechen, müßt ihr natürlich wissen, welche davon ihr einzuhalten habt.
Ihr müßt auch wissen, daß die Anforderungen und Qualitätsstandards für gute Alt-Texte und Bildbeschreibungen auf Mastodon ganz andere sind als im ganzen Rest des Web. Was fürs Web gut genug ist, ist nicht zwingend auch gut genug für Mastodon.
Zu guter Letzt müßt ihr euer Publikum kennen. Und normalerweise kann jeder irgendwo im Fediverse oder sogar im Web euer Publikum sein. Es gibt nur ganz wenige Orte im Fediverse, wo ihr steuern könnt, wer in der Lage sein wird, euer Zeugs zu lesen, und Mastodon gehört nicht dazu. Ihr müßt euer Publikum kennen, und ihr müßt zumindest einschätzen können, was euer Publikum über den Inhalt eures Bildes weiß, was es nicht weiß und was es wissen muß. Wenn euer Publikum nicht zwingend weiß, was etwas ist, erklärt es, aber bitte im Post-Text und nicht im Alt-Text! Wenn euer Publikum nicht zwingend weiß, wie etwas aussieht, das aber vielleicht wissen will, dann beschreibt es.
Bei meinen eigenen Bildern ist meine Strategie, für jedes Bild zwei Beschreibungen zu schreiben. Die eine ist die kurze Bildbeschreibung; die kommt in den Alt-Text. Die werde ich in Zukunft auf maximal 512 Zeichen beschränken, weil Misskey und seine Forks Alt-Texte, die länger als 512 Zeichen sind, löschen. Die andere ist die lange Bildbeschreibung; die kommt in den Post-Text. Die lange Bildbeschreibung ist volldetailliert, sie enthält alle Erklärungen, die zum Verständnis des Bildes und seiner Beschreibungen nötig sind, und sie enthält Transkripte von jedem einzelnen Stück Text, das es irgendwo innerhalb der Grenzen des Bildes gibt, egal, ob auf dem Bild lesbar oder nicht.
Memes zu posten, ist ein Stück weit einfacher. Es gibt nur eine Bildbeschreibung, die hoffentlich kurz genug für den Alt-Text ist. Aber trotzdem habe ich einen ganzen Haufen Sachen zu erklären, und weil ich mich nicht immer auf Links wie nach KnowYourMeme verlassen kann, muß ich oft selbst eine ganze Menge Erklärungen in den Post schreiben.
Idealerweise ist das Schlimmste, was mir passieren kann, daß ich dafür kritisiert werde, daß mein Alt-Text die 200-Zeichen-Marke oder mein Post die 500-Zeichen-Marke überschreitet, oder daß ich für das Letztere blockiert werde. Das Risiko, daß das passiert, reduziere ich mit einer Zusammenfassung, die eine Langer-Post-Inhaltswarnung mit der ungefähren Länge des Post enthält, und den Hashtags #Long, #LongPost, #CWLong, #CWLongPost, #LangerPost und #CWLangerPost, die dann gefiltert werden können.
Aber ich hoffe, daß keiner sagen kann, ich hätte mich nicht genug angestrengt.
#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Zeichenlimit #Zeichenlimits #ZeichenlimitMeta #CWZeichenlimitMeta #500Zeichen #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #Bildbeschreibung #Bildbeschreibungen #BildbeschreibungenMeta #CWBildbeschreibungenMeta -
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 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 -
@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 -
@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.
#AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #FediTips #AltTextTips -
@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.
#AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #FediTips #AltTextTips -
@valkyrie_pilot That's a good question.
The rule (I understand it as one) says that text must always be transcribed 100% verbatim, i.e. absolutely identical to the original. However, this already collides with the rules that image descriptions must not contain all caps because they tend to irritate screen readers, and that acronyms must be handled in a way that screen readers can deal with in a sensible way.
I guess, and I can only guess, that misspellings should be corrected when transcribing text, especially in alt-text.
In earlier image descriptions, all of which are long descriptions in the post text, I've transcribed misspellings as well and even added a "(sic!)" after them to point out that it wasn't me who misspelled it. However, doing so amounts to pointing out the misspellings, as would correcting them in the transcript and then explaining which words are misspelled in which way, even though would conform more with the "always transcribe verbatim" rule. Also, I've since declared these descriptions obsolete.
Unfortunately, I can't find any online resources about alt-texts and image descriptions that even only take misspellings in to-be-transcribed text into consideration, much less define how to deal with them. It's just like text that's unreadable in the image, but that can be sourced elsewhere: It's commonly treated like it doesn't exist.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta