#imagedescriptionmeta — Public Fediverse posts

@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

@shr If you want an offline AI to be able to describe any image absolutely accurately with 100% confidence, right off the bat even without having to learn, you'd need one that can cram just about humanity's entire visual knowledge, enough to fill entire commercial hangars up to the roof with latest-generation, top-of-the-line, server-grade hard drives, into the tiny flash memory inside your iPhone.

#ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AI

@shr If you want an offline AI to be able to describe any image absolutely accurately with 100% confidence, right off the bat even without having to learn, you'd need one that can cram just about humanity's entire visual knowledge, enough to fill entire commercial hangars up to the roof with latest-generation, top-of-the-line, server-grade hard drives, into the tiny flash memory inside your iPhone.

#ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AI

@HeliosPi

Agreed. 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-Demaret

I 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

@HeliosPi

Agreed. 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-Demaret

I 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

@Roland Häder

So 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 Häder

So 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

@eshep

I'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

@eshep

I'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

@🌱🏴‍🅰️🏳️‍⚧️🐧🔧📎 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

@🌱🏴‍🅰️🏳️‍⚧️🐧🔧📎 Ambiyelp Question about describing memes, just to be on the safe side.

Let's assume my character limit is not 500, but practically unlimited. Like, tens of thousands of times higher than on Mastodon.

Let's also assume I don't have a problem with writing a whole lot of text, for while most of the Fediverse is fumbling around on a phone screen, I'm blind-typing on a hardware keyboard.

How would you recommend me to explain meme templates in the post text (in addition to the visual description + text transcripts in the alt-text)?

• not at all (leaves people clueless)
• with one link to KnowYourMeme per used template (links are inconvenient, and the linked websites aren't necessarily sufficiently accessible)
• no links, but a full, in-depth set of KnowYourMeme-level explanations down to the basics (that's 10,000+ extra characters in that one post)
• same, but chopped into bits of no more than 500 characters (that's a thread of 30, 40, 50, 60 or more short posts)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@🌱🏴‍🅰️🏳️‍⚧️🐧🔧📎 Ambiyelp Question about describing memes, just to be on the safe side.

Let's assume my character limit is not 500, but practically unlimited. Like, tens of thousands of times higher than on Mastodon.

Let's also assume I don't have a problem with writing a whole lot of text, for while most of the Fediverse is fumbling around on a phone screen, I'm blind-typing on a hardware keyboard.

How would you recommend me to explain meme templates in the post text (in addition to the visual description + text transcripts in the alt-text)?

• not at all (leaves people clueless)
• with one link to KnowYourMeme per used template (links are inconvenient, and the linked websites aren't necessarily sufficiently accessible)
• no links, but a full, in-depth set of KnowYourMeme-level explanations down to the basics (that's 10,000+ extra characters in that one post)
• same, but chopped into bits of no more than 500 characters (that's a thread of 30, 40, 50, 60 or more short posts)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@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 the title tag 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 the title tag 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 the title tag 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 the title tag as well. In order to read an alt-text, the mouse cursor has to be hovered above the image. And Hubzilla has no alternative to its Web interface, only different themes for the Web interface. There is no phone app, at least none worth speaking of.

Also, on Hubzilla, we don't need to use alt-texts to write around character limits. Our character limit is 16,777,215, and that's the maximum size of the database field for the message text. Actually, on Hubzilla, alt-texts are included in these over 16 million characters as opposed to separate data fields. Thus, sighted Hubzilla users have no use for alt-texts whatsoever. Thus, there's no reason to make opening alt-texts easier (as if that was Hubzilla's only UI issue). Thus, there's no "Alt" button, and there will never be one.

It's just about the same just about everywhere else from Misskey (hard-coded 3,000 characters) to Akkoma (configurable 5,000 characters) to Friendica (same limit as Hubzilla) to (streams) and Forte (over 24 million characters) to pure long-form blogging stuff like WordPress, Ghost, Write Freely and Plume.

Now I ask you: What are people supposed to do whose both hands had to be amputated due to some accident? Or people with deformed hands who can neither use a smartphone nor a computer mouse nor a trackball nor any other pointing device on a computer? Who operate their computer with e.g. a headpointer, a plastic stick strapped to their forehead with which they poke the keys on their computer? And who are in the Fediverse, but not on Mastodon? How are they supposed to open an alt-text with only a keyboard as an input device?

Or how about people with a severe tremor? Who have big troubles moving a mouse cursor over an image and then keeping it there because it keeps slipping away? Who probably operate their computers via the keyboard and only the keyboard, too?

Or, a wholly different example, how about those who use Linux with a super-minimalist, keyboard-only tiling window manager? Who do have a GUI (albeit a very frugal one), who do use graphical Web browsers, but who deliberately, intentionaly, do not have any kind of pointing device? Who, nonetheless, are ten times faster with only keyboard shortcuts than you and me are with a mouse? How are they supposed to move a mouse cursor over an image without a mouse?

This is something that many Mastodon users don't know:

• Not all Fediverse frontends have an "Alt" button.
• "Alt" buttons make no sense in the non-Mastodon Fediverse. In the non-Mastodon Fediverse, the character limits are so high that nobody has to use alt-texts to write around them. Expanding the character limit with alt-texts is a 100% Mastodon-only thing that simply doesn't translate to places with thousands or millions of characters and never will.
• There are other disabilities out there than visual impairments and neurodivergence. Even in the Fediverse.
• Not everyone in the Fediverse uses a pointing device of whichever sorts.

Oh, and there's one more thing: Misskey and its various forks (Sharkey, Iceshrimp-JS, CherryPick etc.) all have a character limit of 512 for alt-texts. They should enforce it the same way as Mastodon enforces its 1,500-character limit for alt-texts, namely by truncating longer alt-texts. This is bad enough already.

However, they all have the same nasty bug that still hasn't been fixed yet AFAIK: Instead of truncating longer alt-texts, they delete them. So if you describe your image in an alt-text of more than 512 characters, users on Misskey, Sharkey & Co. will never know that your image is supposed to have an alt-text. Instead, they may think that you were too lazy to describe your image. And if you use the alt-text to explain your image in over 512 characters, this explanation will never reach users on Misskey, Sharkey & Co.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #i3 #i3wm #Disability #A11y #Accessibility

@Fluse The two channels that I have for posting images have no reach whatsoever anyway. Describing the images won't change that.

Still, I put more time and effort into describing (and explaining) my images than anyone else.

#AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@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

@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

@Roknrol I still wonder whether I should have added a full, detailed description of what a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air Coupé looks like in general and what the two '57 Chevys in the picture looked like in particular when I posted this picture. I kind of got lazy with the full description of this image because I wanted to get it done.

And yes, there are two '57 Chevys in the image, technically speaking.

#ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@Roknrol I still wonder whether I should have added a full, detailed description of what a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air Coupé looks like in general and what the two '57 Chevys in the picture looked like in particular when I posted this picture. I kind of got lazy with the full description of this image because I wanted to get it done.

And yes, there are two '57 Chevys in the image, technically speaking.

#ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@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

@Leonardo Giovanni Scur First of all, it isn't about my requirements. Just like, surprise, surprise, Mastodon's alt-text police is not blind.

It's about general accessibility. And it's about Mastodon users acting inclusively towards blind or visually-impaired people and, at the same time, ableistically towards people with other physical disabilities. Just because they cling hard to the extra 1,500 characters that alt-text gives them per image to their meagre character count for posts.

Except for professional Web accessibility experts, literally nobody on Mastodon seems to know what alt-text really is for. Alt-text is meant to be a 1:1 stand-in for an image, in case the image can't be perceived for whichever reason.

Alt-text is not meant to be an additional source of information beyond what information the image conveys.

Mastodon's use of alt-text for extra information beyond the post character limit is just as much alt-text misuse as cramming alt-text with keywords for SEO on websites. Unfortunately, it is so deeply engrained into Mastodon's culture that even the Mastodon devs have played along and added that "ALT" button which most Mastodon users think is the default and the standard Fediverse-wide now.

But let me tell you something:

Mastodon and its forks are most likely the only Fediverse server applications with an alt-text button. And they're far from making up the whole Fediverse.

Misskey and its various forks don't have an alt-text button.

AFAIK, Pleroma-FE and Akkoma-FE don't have an alt-text button, and neither has Mangane.

Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams), Forte, they all don't have an alt-text button.

Lemmy doesn't have an alt-text button. /kbin and Mbin don't have an alt-text button. PieFed doesn't have an alt-text button.

WriteFreely doesn't have an alt-text button. Plume doesn't have an alt-text button. WordPress doesn't have an alt-text button either.

Blogs in general don't have an alt-text button. Forums don't have an alt-text button. Static websites don't have an alt-text button.

Twitter/𝕏 doesn't have an alt-text button. Facebook doesn't have an alt-text button. Instagram doesn't have an alt-text button. Threads doesn't have an alt-text button. Tumblr doesn't have an alt-text button. Flickr doesn't have an alt-text button. Pinterest doesn't have an alt-text button. And so forth.

The W3C doesn't mention alt-text buttons. The WCAG don't mention alt-text buttons.

Why not? Because they're all way behind Mastodon in accessibility?

No, but because their developers know that alt-text is not an additional source of information for sighted people.

Literally the only place anywhere in the Web where alt-text both counts and is actively used as an additional source of information for sighted people is Mastodon. Plus its forks.

How I handle that? I put all needed extra information into the post text. But I'm not on Mastodon. I'm on Hubzilla. My character limit is over 30,000 times higher than on Mastodon.

Seriously, if missing alt-text is sanctioned as ableist, if useless alt-text is sanctioned as ableist, if inaccurate alt-text is sanctioned as ableist, if too lacking alt-text is sanctioned as ableist, then putting exclusive information into alt-text must be sanctioned as ableist just as well.

To those on Mastodon who oh so desperately need more than 500 characters: Move someplace in the Fediverse that has more than 500 characters. There's Fediverse server software from 3,000 characters to over 24,000,000 characters that, nonetheless, is federated with Mastodon.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #Ableism #AbleismMeta #CWAbleismMeta

@Hazelnoot My goal is to get alt-texts and image descriptions right. As right as possible.

My goal is to not be sanctioned and/or lectured by the alt-text police for allegedly being lazy and/or careless.

In order to achieve that, I must be ahead of everyone's requirements. Whatever these requirements may be.

But in order to achieve that, I must know their requirements. Everyone's requirements.

If you want me to follow your rules, I need to know your rules.

Right now, I'm probably vastly overcompliant with everyone's rules with only a few exceptions that I can't comply with (alt-texts must not be longer than 200 or 125 or 100 characters, posts in the Fediverse must not be longer than 500 characters, all of the text in an image must always be transcribed in the alt-text etc.).

This way, I hope that my image posts will stay in compliance with existing image description quality standards for a few years, and when they no longer are, they're so old that nobody demands I upgrade my image descriptions to then-current standards.

tl;dr: "Just do it" doesn't cut it. Just doing it is likely to get you sanctioned because you don't do it well enough. And something is no longer better than nothing.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AltTextPolice #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #MastodonCulture

@Hazelnoot My goal is to get alt-texts and image descriptions right. As right as possible.

My goal is to not be sanctioned and/or lectured by the alt-text police for allegedly being lazy and/or careless.

In order to achieve that, I must be ahead of everyone's requirements. Whatever these requirements may be.

But in order to achieve that, I must know their requirements. Everyone's requirements.

If you want me to follow your rules, I need to know your rules.

Right now, I'm probably vastly overcompliant with everyone's rules with only a few exceptions that I can't comply with (alt-texts must not be longer than 200 or 125 or 100 characters, posts in the Fediverse must not be longer than 500 characters, all of the text in an image must always be transcribed in the alt-text etc.).

This way, I hope that my image posts will stay in compliance with existing image description quality standards for a few years, and when they no longer are, they're so old that nobody demands I upgrade my image descriptions to then-current standards.

tl;dr: "Just do it" doesn't cut it. Just doing it is likely to get you sanctioned because you don't do it well enough. And something is no longer better than nothing.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AltTextPolice #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #MastodonCulture

@[18+!!] saph I'm not an artist, but I really need to know the definition of "helpful" in the context of "helpful alt-text". What are the requirements for alt-text to count as "helpful"?

It must be 100% accurate, I guess that's a given. This also means that it must be 100% written by hand as opposed to AI-generated.

But what are the minimum requirements in terms of details for an alt-text to be helpful?

Can alt-text be too long/too detailed to be helpful?

I'm going to limit my alt-texts to a maximum of 512 characters. Misskey, Sharkey, Iceshrimp-JS and the other Misskey forks automatically delete any alt-text that's longer than 512 characters, making it appear like I hadn't provided any alt-text to begin with, that's why. Newspaper scans aside, can alt-text with no more than 512 characters be too lacking in detail to be helpful?

What if, in addition to an alt-text with a maximum of 512 characters, I also provide a much longer and much more detailed image description in the post text? (My character limit is not 500, but over 16.7 million. I can post long descriptions with tens of thousands of characters in one piece, and I have done so in the past.)

Would that be acceptable to provide the details in description that do not fit into an alt-text of no more than 512 characters?

Or is that unacceptable because the description in the alt-text must be as detailed as required, and additional descriptions in the post don't count?

Or is that unacceptable because there must only be one description to each image, namely in the alt-text and only in the alt-text?

Or is that unacceptable because it makes my post longer than 500 characters?

Are explanations and other additional information about the image allowed in the post text? Because they are not allowed in the alt-text because some people cannot access alt-text.

Or must explanations etc. absolutely be in the alt-text in order for the alt-text to be "helpful" enough?

Must they even be only in the alt-text so that the post never exceeds 500 characters?

What if I can't describe and explain my images in a maximum of 512 characters? What if I can't describe and explain my images in a maximum of 1,500 characters either, but I absolutely must describe and explain them in the alt-text?

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters

@[18+!!] saph I'm not an artist, but I really need to know the definition of "helpful" in the context of "helpful alt-text". What are the requirements for alt-text to count as "helpful"?

It must be 100% accurate, I guess that's a given. This also means that it must be 100% written by hand as opposed to AI-generated.

But what are the minimum requirements in terms of details for an alt-text to be helpful?

Can alt-text be too long/too detailed to be helpful?

I'm going to limit my alt-texts to a maximum of 512 characters. Misskey, Sharkey, Iceshrimp-JS and the other Misskey forks automatically delete any alt-text that's longer than 512 characters, making it appear like I hadn't provided any alt-text to begin with, that's why. Newspaper scans aside, can alt-text with no more than 512 characters be too lacking in detail to be helpful?

What if, in addition to an alt-text with a maximum of 512 characters, I also provide a much longer and much more detailed image description in the post text? (My character limit is not 500, but over 16.7 million. I can post long descriptions with tens of thousands of characters in one piece, and I have done so in the past.)

Would that be acceptable to provide the details in description that do not fit into an alt-text of no more than 512 characters?

Or is that unacceptable because the description in the alt-text must be as detailed as required, and additional descriptions in the post don't count?

Or is that unacceptable because there must only be one description to each image, namely in the alt-text and only in the alt-text?

Or is that unacceptable because it makes my post longer than 500 characters?

Are explanations and other additional information about the image allowed in the post text? Because they are not allowed in the alt-text because some people cannot access alt-text.

Or must explanations etc. absolutely be in the alt-text in order for the alt-text to be "helpful" enough?

Must they even be only in the alt-text so that the post never exceeds 500 characters?

What if I can't describe and explain my images in a maximum of 512 characters? What if I can't describe and explain my images in a maximum of 1,500 characters either, but I absolutely must describe and explain them in the alt-text?

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters

@hosh The alt-text police of the Mastodon Home Owners' Association (Mastodon HOA) have a tendency to be overzealous. And they don't talk to each other. They all act for themselves as lone wolves with exactly no coordination amongst each other whatsoever. You never know what kinds of rules they whip up for themselves.

Chances are that they only let image descriptions count that come directly with the image. If they acknowledge an image description outside the alt-text, it must be in the post itself. Not as an external link, but the description text itself.

Besides, at least some in the Mastodon HOA have problems with external links. And I don't just mean that they don't trust embedded links whose URL they can't see in plain sight, the kind that Hubzilla can create and Mastodon can't (not that Hubzilla couldn't fake a plain-sight link by embedding a different URL than the visible).

I don't mean either that probably a majority of Mastodon users don't even recognise embedded links without a visible URL as such because they don't know that such a thing can exist in the Fediverse, because Mastodon can't make them.

No, what I mean is the notion that external links for explanations are inherently bad from an accessibility point of view. "Mastodon" (as in how Mastodon users experience the Fediverse, i.e. the Mastodon Web UI or any of the popular mobile phone apps) is sufficiently accessible. But the Web outside of "Mastodon" (same definition again) may not be accessible enough.

A few years ago, I've literally read a Mastodon toot in which someone said that explanations must not be linked to. Linked websites have a risk of not being accessible. Explanations must always be directly in the same post. Apparently, they thought that everything and anything can be explained and broken down until everyone understands it within 500 characters.

This is also why Mastodon users tend to explain their images in the alt-text. It's only there where they have at least halfway enough characters for an explanation, 1,500 per image as opposed to usually only 500 in the post text. (On Mastodon, much unlike Hubzilla, the alt-text is a separate database field that exists separately for each of the up to four images per message.)

That is, explanations must never go into the alt-text because there are people who cannot open alt-texts to read them. But nobody on Mastodon knows that.

It should be obvious that what counts for explanations counts for visual descriptions just as well.

And in fact, regarding Hubzilla articles, they're actually right. I've once pointed an actually blind screen reader user to an article on my Hubzilla channel. She said she couldn't even navigate the Web interface. She literally couldn't get to the text body of the article to have it read out by her screen reader.

Hubzilla's Web interface, no matter which app is opened, is not accessible. It does not work with screen readers. It's largely still stuck in 2012 when nobdy made any ruckus about the accessibility of hobbyist Web projects.

The only reason why at least some blind or visually-impaired users can read our Hubzilla posts and comments and DMs is because they're all on Mastodon, and they read our content either on Mastodon's Web UI or a Mastodon app that supports screen readers. But they do not read our content at the source. Because they can't.

I actually took into consideration linking to my long image descriptions. But my idea was not to link to a Hubzilla article, nor to a Hubzilla wiki or a Hubzilla card. No, my idea was to write a plain HTML document, upload it to my file space and link to that.

I've dropped that idea for various reasons:

• Generally, still, external links are frowned upon.
• I don't know if plain HTML is accessible without a CSS. And I can't add a CSS to this HTML if the HTML document is not served to the recipient by a Web server, but by a file server.
• I don't know how Google Chrome on Android or Safari on an iPhone will react when they access an HTML document on a file space. Will they display it as a website? Or will they download it onto the device as a file without opening it because, again, it is served to them not by a Web server, but by a file server?
• Mobile users dislike opening websites from apps because they dislike their browser popping open. And on Mastodon, much unlike Hubzilla, almost everyone is on a phone and a dedicated app almost all the time.
• This also means that mobile users would have the image and the description in two separate apps. The image in their Mastodon app, the description in their browser.
• I would need much more description.
  Right now, when I have multiple images, my long descriptions consist of a preamble that contains all necessary explanations and, if applicable, visual descriptions of elements that are common to all images. The individual descriptions for each image follow.
  But if I had one image description file per image, then each image description would need the whole preamble included. I can't just add the preamble to the first description file.
  What if someone opens the third description file first? They'll only have a very incomplete description. And linking to the first description file is inconvenient. I would have to know the URL of the first file before completing and uploading the other files because I'd have to include the URL of the first file in them. And the users would have to have three documents open (the image post, the description of the image they're interested in, the description of the first image with the preamble) just to experience one image. Spread across two phone apps.

And that's why I can't put my additional long description in an external document.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AltTextPolice #MastodonHOA #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #MastodonCulture

@hosh The alt-text police of the Mastodon Home Owners' Association (Mastodon HOA) have a tendency to be overzealous. And they don't talk to each other. They all act for themselves as lone wolves with exactly no coordination amongst each other whatsoever. You never know what kinds of rules they whip up for themselves.

Chances are that they only let image descriptions count that come directly with the image. If they acknowledge an image description outside the alt-text, it must be in the post itself. Not as an external link, but the description text itself.

Besides, at least some in the Mastodon HOA have problems with external links. And I don't just mean that they don't trust embedded links whose URL they can't see in plain sight, the kind that Hubzilla can create and Mastodon can't (not that Hubzilla couldn't fake a plain-sight link by embedding a different URL than the visible).

I don't mean either that probably a majority of Mastodon users don't even recognise embedded links without a visible URL as such because they don't know that such a thing can exist in the Fediverse, because Mastodon can't make them.

No, what I mean is the notion that external links for explanations are inherently bad from an accessibility point of view. "Mastodon" (as in how Mastodon users experience the Fediverse, i.e. the Mastodon Web UI or any of the popular mobile phone apps) is sufficiently accessible. But the Web outside of "Mastodon" (same definition again) may not be accessible enough.

A few years ago, I've literally read a Mastodon toot in which someone said that explanations must not be linked to. Linked websites have a risk of not being accessible. Explanations must always be directly in the same post. Apparently, they thought that everything and anything can be explained and broken down until everyone understands it within 500 characters.

This is also why Mastodon users tend to explain their images in the alt-text. It's only there where they have at least halfway enough characters for an explanation, 1,500 per image as opposed to usually only 500 in the post text. (On Mastodon, much unlike Hubzilla, the alt-text is a separate database field that exists separately for each of the up to four images per message.)

That is, explanations must never go into the alt-text because there are people who cannot open alt-texts to read them. But nobody on Mastodon knows that.

It should be obvious that what counts for explanations counts for visual descriptions just as well.

And in fact, regarding Hubzilla articles, they're actually right. I've once pointed an actually blind screen reader user to an article on my Hubzilla channel. She said she couldn't even navigate the Web interface. She literally couldn't get to the text body of the article to have it read out by her screen reader.

Hubzilla's Web interface, no matter which app is opened, is not accessible. It does not work with screen readers. It's largely still stuck in 2012 when nobdy made any ruckus about the accessibility of hobbyist Web projects.

The only reason why at least some blind or visually-impaired users can read our Hubzilla posts and comments and DMs is because they're all on Mastodon, and they read our content either on Mastodon's Web UI or a Mastodon app that supports screen readers. But they do not read our content at the source. Because they can't.

I actually took into consideration linking to my long image descriptions. But my idea was not to link to a Hubzilla article, nor to a Hubzilla wiki or a Hubzilla card. No, my idea was to write a plain HTML document, upload it to my file space and link to that.

I've dropped that idea for various reasons:

• Generally, still, external links are frowned upon.
• I don't know if plain HTML is accessible without a CSS. And I can't add a CSS to this HTML if the HTML document is not served to the recipient by a Web server, but by a file server.
• I don't know how Google Chrome on Android or Safari on an iPhone will react when they access an HTML document on a file space. Will they display it as a website? Or will they download it onto the device as a file without opening it because, again, it is served to them not by a Web server, but by a file server?
• Mobile users dislike opening websites from apps because they dislike their browser popping open. And on Mastodon, much unlike Hubzilla, almost everyone is on a phone and a dedicated app almost all the time.
• This also means that mobile users would have the image and the description in two separate apps. The image in their Mastodon app, the description in their browser.
• I would need much more description.
  Right now, when I have multiple images, my long descriptions consist of a preamble that contains all necessary explanations and, if applicable, visual descriptions of elements that are common to all images. The individual descriptions for each image follow.
  But if I had one image description file per image, then each image description would need the whole preamble included. I can't just add the preamble to the first description file.
  What if someone opens the third description file first? They'll only have a very incomplete description. And linking to the first description file is inconvenient. I would have to know the URL of the first file before completing and uploading the other files because I'd have to include the URL of the first file in them. And the users would have to have three documents open (the image post, the description of the image they're interested in, the description of the first image with the preamble) just to experience one image. Spread across two phone apps.

And that's why I can't put my additional long description in an external document.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AltTextPolice #MastodonHOA #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #MastodonCulture