As a non-native English speaker, one of the reasons I love #alttext on Mastodon (let alone their obvious accessibility benefits) is that they're a great way to learn new words or new ways of describing things.
I won't boost images without alt text.
I will unfollow people who don't use alt text (it's easier to be confident in who I follow for boosting)
I turn off boosts for people who boost posts with no alt text.
If you want to up your alt text game this might help. #alttext
The Beginner's Guide to Alternative Text
Alternative text (commonly known as alt text) is a crucial aspect of web accessibility that ensures all users, including those with visual impairments, can access and understand the content of images on websites. In this guide, we’ll explore what alt text is, why it’s important, how to write effective alt text, and best practices to follow.
I just added a note on Phanpy. I really like how prominent the image description field is when you upload an image, and I am guessing this contributes to the notably high use of alt text.
Something that I myself missed when I opened the original ticket is that alt text really should be on the same level of importance as the content of the post itself.
A river monster that can reach 120lbs and eat anything nearby is tightening its chokehold on America's waterways and has now crossed the Canadian border.
Conservationists are sounding the alarm about their unstoppable march across the country from their original habitat in the Gulf of Mexico basin.
'They are going to be one of the apex predators around every system once they establish those populations,' said biologist Joel Fleming. 'If they can fit it in their mouth, they're going to eat it.'
@hankg
I just put it in the #AltText like an easter egg. It's a flathead catfish. Pythons haven't established a foothold out of the Everglades so far or I've not heard of it.
I’m seeing this graphic making the rounds withouth attribution - many versions have the info at the bottom cut off. The creator is alienyrox2 on reddit (https://www.reddit.com/user/alienyrox2/).
This is a good explainer of why we were seeing so many colors from the Northern Lights Friday night. So cool to see a lot of reds, which are rare, around the northern hemisphere.
The contorted excuses people concoct to excuse not adding #altText boggle my mind.
Case in point: even if alt text is "now primarily used to train AI" [citation desperately needed], as I've just seen claimed, there are still real-world humans who benefit from it, just as there have been since the web emerged.
If AI tech is now being trained on alt text, it's also now being trained on all the rest of your whatever.
By only concerning yourself with the alt text, you're routing all the AI-related harm to screen reader users, actual humans who already experience massive social & technical marginalization.
It's much simpler to just start adding "cute cat" to your cute cat photos than it is to invent new excuses for behaviors that ultimately just harm screen reader users.
Der Pirat-o-mat ist online: Ab sofort kannst du deine Standpunkte mit 12 echten Abstimmungen im EU-Parlament vergleichen. Ein Archiv unserer Abstimmungsgrafiken liefern wir mit.
Würde ich gerne weiterempfehlen, mangels #Barrierefreiheit wird das aber nichts.
Die Seite ist eine einzige Orgie von reingeklatschten Bitmaps zu Abstimmungen - keine der zahllosen Grafiken hat auch nur ein bisschen #AltText, zum Beispiel eine simple %-Zusammenfassung je Partei.
Wer blind oder sehbehindert ist, bleibt also außen vor.
@katzenberger Ja, so ein #AltText wäre super, leider sind unsere Kapazitäten da sehr begrenzt. Wenn die Community sowas beisteuert, würden wir das natürlich sofort einpflegen.