Alt text is an accessibility tool for many people, primarily those who are blind or visually disabled. It is not appropriate to ever use it as a punchline for a joke to tell a joke. Doing so takes away its reliability and trustworthiness. There are people who are INCAPABLE OF SEEING AN IMAGE OR FULLY SEEING AN IMAGE OTHERWISE. Using alt text to tell jokes HURTS THESE PEOPLE.

This post has like 8,000 notes. I'm so disappointed in how many people think this okay, but even more sad that many people don't understand how this is harmful or what alt text is even for. Please don't propagate or encourage these jokes. You are misusing and actively harming an accessibility tool. If you didn't know that this is what it was for, now you do know! Please do your part and don't spread such things.

People in this demographic, please let me know how to tag to get a hold of you as someone who doesn't need Image Descriptions!!

Alt text! ALWAYS alt text, because in the HTML page structure, it’s PART of the image element’s attributes.

If it’s not, it gets separated and, particularly with the way modern content management systems render text (often as weird separate chunks), can’t be easily found.

Putting “image id” text in front of a description is NOT standard accessibility practice. Using ALT text is supported by all browsers and screen reader software.

DO NOT duplicate alt text and visible text, because then a visually impaired user has to listen to it twice.

If you need visible captions paired with images, use the HTML figure and figcaption elements - you can use different alt text there to add information a visually impaired user needs, and the figcaption to explain the meaning for all audiences.

Also, learn to write helpful image descriptions! And generally, only write alt text for images that are informative, not decorative.

XKit Rewritten (available on firefox and chrome) has a setting to display alt text under images, so if you need or want to see the description, this makes it automatic.

Once you install the extension, open its menu, find and enable AccessKit, then click on it to open the list of accessibility settings. "Move alt text to captions below images" is the setting you're looking for.

painting made easier

[Audio Transcript:

Do you want to paint but pain, disability, limited range of motion or tremors are getting in the way of that?

It’s world watercolor month and disability pride month, so let’s combine the two and talk about ways that you can watercolor and make it a little easier on yourself.

First up, if you struggle with grip issues, some manufacturers like Blick will actually make some of their brushes with egg shaped handles.

These are typically easier to hold, but they do come in a limited range of options so you can get something like one of these egg shaped pencil holders that will do more or less the same thing. These are just a bit easier to hold and they can reduce hand fatigue.

Next up, if you struggle with something like tremors or shaking, weight is your friend. There are universal weighted handles that you can slip onto the end and tighten on your brush or whatever you’re using as long as it fits in, and it adds a bunch of weight to the back end of it so it reduces the amount of shaking that’s possible.

If you struggle with grip strength or need something to help you hold onto something, this is an easy ring writer clip, and you can slot your brush into it and even if you’re not gripping it tightly it’s still secured to your hand.

Another option is something like this, this is an easy grip. It’s a silicone attachment that you can place on that give you an extra handle and extra security for holding your brushes and other art tools.

And finally one of my favorite tools is this artist leaning bridge. Mine is an acrylic piece of plastic that just sits over the top and allows you to rest on top while you can paint underneath it.

End Transcript]

Mountbatten // Portable Electronic Brailler // Australia 1990

Looks great but more importantly I bet this feels great.

via

“I went to school for game design! I am highly qualified to talk about any game out there!”

I bet you don’t even know how big an 8 year old’s hands are.

You cannot meaningfully understand a great deal of Nintendo’s game development decisions without understanding how a child holds and uses a modern game controller. People love to critique game companies like Nintendo, especially core gamers and educated developers, as if they are some authority on game design but in twenty years I have never seen this type of individual talk about how Nintendo’s game design is constrained by the size of a child’s hands.

So…how big are they?

Big enough to use a dpad on the playstation controller but not large enough to use the analog stick comfortably. The opposite is true on the xbox controller. The shape of the joycon is designed for easy access for small hands for both.

Still, the kid’s thumb will have difficulty reaching both so rapid switches are not possible. On the left hand of the switch the stick is above and the dpad below, and the opposite is true on the right. This is a direct consequence of how a kid might use the controller. In most games the left hand controls movement - meaning an analog stick - and the right hand controls discreet inputs - meaning the dpad/button diamond.

Children’s also struggle to reach shoulder buttons and have lower grip width, so the natural gamer grip in which two fingers are resting on the shoulder buttons does not work at all for children. They usually have to use all four fingers to hold up a heavy device. The shoulder buttons go from being the most easily accessed buttons on the controller to the most difficult.

A child’s grip strength is lower, and thus so is their ability to hold a heavy controller comfortably, especially one not designed for their hand size. A single joycon in sideways mode, often used in child’s party games on the switch, is a far better controller size for a child while it is uncomfortably cramped for an adult.

It is not a coincidence that the Switch, which is marketed as a family console, comes prepacked with the controllers that are kid friendly and adult friendly controllers are a secondary purchase.

There are more things you can point out, but in a practical sense you can see these design principles applied by comparing something like Kirby vs Metroid Dread.

Kirby is almost entirely controlled through the face buttons, with only the rarely used defense button mapped to the shoulder buttons, and you can really get by with never using it. The triggers are not used at all. You rarely have to combination press anything. If my memory is correct, the shoulder buttons are never used for any temporary transformation abilities. The difficulty of using new abilities should not be compounded by hard to reach buttons.

Dread on the other hand uses combination presses a lot and ties three critical abilities (free aim, missile use, and sliding) to the shoulder buttons. The omega cannon, a rarely used but critical and time sensitive ability, is tied to the shoulder buttons for the easiest and most intuitive possible use. The stress of defeating an emmi should not be compounded by fumbling with controls.

Smash Bros in particular is pretty cool in how its control scheme is set up. The most basic functions that a child might use are very simply mapped to the single stick and face buttons. As you learn to play better and try more advanced techniques (like an adult might) like timed grabs, dodging, and shield use you move away from the face buttons, incorporating more and more use of the shoulder buttons. It splits the difference for the best of both worlds. You can trace the principles of this design all the way back to the N64 and I would not be surprised to learn that the in game mechanics were built specifically to compliment this novice to expert transitional design, which is what makes smash bros so friendly to novice and expert gamers alike.

#i have smallish hands for an adult#and arthritis#so this is relevant to me too#something to consider

This is an excellent point as well, something I wasn’t going to get into but so much of game design just ignores accessibility issues like this all together. So many of the basic assumptions of game design from input device to button mapping to in game accessibility features are built around the assumption of fully abled adult between late teenager and middle age.

I always forget I have the "be my eyes" app on my phone but every once in a while it will pop up while I'm doing stuff and it's always exciting to help out. I've sorted mail, oriented people on streets, found lost objects that were dropped, differentiated similar objects, etc. Today was the latter, and I had to smile because he was sorting cans and he held up the first one and I had to admit his lights were off and I couldn't see anything either.

The sign language interpreter was feeling it.

It's actually common practice for sign language intetpreters to absolutely jam to the song they are translating, as it's not only their job to translate the words, but the tone and rhythm as well. That's most clearly read through body language, so you end up with scenes like this.

text alternatives are about the purpose of the image, not about every little detail

The questions you ask yourself when creating the primary text alternative for an image should not be 

It should be 

“In context” is important. 

Think your friend across the room who is scrolling Tumblr on their own phone and not looking at your phone which you, too, are using to scroll Tumblr, and a short post makes you laugh. You’d probably say whatever text is in the post (potentially abbreviated) and then if, say, a meme was used, you would say what the meme is, not what the photo is.

Imagine (I say, as if you have never seen this online) if every time someone used a memetic image they included a wall of text explaining the content of the image, with subjective, redundant or even incorrect details:

instead of its moniker/purpose

If you know the meme, you know what that means. In the context of Tumblr, a user can be expected to know the purpose & significance of a meme, because that is literally what a meme is! 

If you don’t know the meme, in nine words and 36 characters you have enough information to search for or ask for more. With the long description, you have no clue what the image actually is on the whole nor what purpose it is serving on the page until the the second to last sentence.

It takes me about ~2 seconds to look at the meme in question (shown below) recognize it, and read the caption.

The long text description above takes more than 51 seconds for Natural Reader text to speech software to read aloud. 

The short one takes only four (4) seconds.

Which text alternative do you think provides the most equivalent experience to someone looking at the image?

For additional information on established web accessibility standards for text alternatives, you can go to:

I feel like I need to tell everyone how brilliantly the Globe incorporated a deaf Gildenstern into the 2018 Hamlet and then force all of you to watch it

ok, so Gildenstern is played by a deaf actor, Nadia Nadarajah. he* signs all his lines, and either Rosencratz interprets for him, or the person he’s talking to says something that makes it obvious what he just said, depending. how each character reacts to Gildenstern is completely in-character and often hilarious

it’s all brilliant and adds another layer of humor and pathos and you should all watch it

*casting at the Globe right now is gender neutral so I’m just going to use the character’s pronouns

guys I know I’m wittering on about this but the thing I want to emphasize is that there is no tokenism here. they didn’t just shove a deaf actor into a speaking role so they could pat themselves on the back about how progressive they are. they went to the effort of fully integrating Nadarajah’s deafness into the story so that it not only fit organically within the narrative but actually enhanced it. watching Hamlet’s signing disintegrate as his trust in R&G disintegrates adds a depth to that storyline I’ve never seen before. Claudius has exactly the awkwardness of someone who thinks of himself as a good person and therefore thinks he’s being kind and generous with his accommodations for disability, but has never even once actually asked a disabled person what they need, which is so on-point for his character it hurts.

I know Michelle Terry gets a lot of hate mail for her policy of race-, gender-, and disability-blind casting, but fuck all those people. long may that policy continue.

the glenda jackson production of king lear on broadway did something similar with the Duke of Cornwall, and it was actually the best part of the play, imo.  because when Cornwall was speaking to Lear or to the Court, he had a sign language interpreter to speak the actual literal words aloud, but when he was talking to and conspiring with Regan, his wife, they were just signing back and forth with no translation for the audience, and it emphasized the intimacy between the two even as they turn against literally everyone else in the play, which was fantastic.

and the best part of it was, by the second half of the play, you were so used to it, that you didn’t even blink anymore when watching him and listening to the spoken words come from the interpreter - you just watched the actor playing Cornwall and let the words come from the other guy, but the guy kind of fades into the background.  it didn’t hurt that the actor for Cornwall was one of the tallest on stage, and had bright red hair - it was easy to watch him, instead of his interpreter.

which is why it was so shocking and so perfect when the interpreter is the one who kills him.

See, they folded the character of the servant who kills Cornwall into the person of this character who had been such a non-entity that you almost forgot he was on stage - until you realize, no, this is another person, and he’s been here, watching all this the whole time, and he finally gets to the breaking point where he can’t stand by and translate anymore, he has to do something to stop the cruelty he’s seeing, and it’s not just a random guy who comes in for the scene and sees them blinding Gloucester, it’s the man whose been by his side for the entire play, the man who was his voice who finally has a line of his own.  who finally speaks on his own behalf to say “no.”

and then, of course, he gets killed, but Cornwall dies in the same scene so it’s not like they need to get a new translator or anything.  but it was the most fucking brilliant choice i’ve ever seen re: casting in a Shakespearean production, and the rest of the play pales in my memory in comparison.

Just wanted to put a plug in for one of my new fav websites, Can I Play That?, which focuses on accessbility reviews of video games by disabled gamers. As someone with a dexterity/mobility disability in my hands (carpal tunnel) I NEED games that allow easy and convenient ways to push buttons to do stuff and let me rebind keys at will. I’m now checking Can I Play That? before buying games since their reviews are ++. They include accessibility reviews for deaf/hard of hearing and cognitive disabiliies too.

i really appreciate when people go to the effort to include subtitles and image/video transcription/ID, its really needed more and i personally need the subtitles cuz im hard of hearing, but  as much as i appreciate it

please, PLEASE stop seeing subtitles and transcriptions as a place to flex your writing style and skills

write plainly. write whats happening, no purple prose, no wink wink nudge nudge, no jokes that arent already in what youre describing, no meme references and shit

we need these to keep up and parse the work

you adding all this shit defeats the purpose

were old enough to draw our own conclusions if you just describe stuff plainly

and sure take this as me being stodgy and all, but this includes stuff like doing video description where someone throws something and you write like “she yeets it across the room”

just say throws

this is accessibility stuff, not something for you to dress up

names blocked cuz again, i really do appreciate when people take the time to try to make things accessible to others, but this is not the way to do it. this is decidedly NOT a great transcription. this is like, in every way, the example of everything  you should NOT be doing in transcription or subtitling or image or video ID

dont do this

we need these to be able to get the same experience from something as someone who doesnt need these

when you do your goofy editorializing or summarizing and try to write this stuff like a funny joak, you deny us the ability to watch something and draw our own conclusions like you get to without

Originated by @axellenobody  in this reddit thread - “I have a few players in my games that have various degrees of Dyslexia, and one of them - u/Axelle123 - worked with me to make a Character Sheet that’s helped several of my players read and comprehend what’s going on on the character sheets…”

Personally I think that these sheets look exciting and fun to play even if you don’t have dyslexia, everyone should use ‘em!

(Also, check out the use of Comic Sans, a notably dyslexia-friendly font, in action!)

[ID: three screenshots of tweets, blurred so they’re illegible. 'photo' is written over each in large all caps. /end ID]

if you don't add alt text, a caption, or a link, this is all the information screenreader users get about your screenshots

screenshots of text take an accessible format and make it unaccessible. it takes less clicks to copy the text of a tweet than it does to screenshot and crop it.

here is a guide on writing image descriptions.

caption your images. let disabled people in on your jokes too.

Wheelchair accessible is not just "house for regular people but has ramp to front door", alas, its stuff like width of doorways, height of countertops, space for legs under countertops, etc etc, many many things go into making a house wheelchair accessible :( this is why its so much more $$$. Has to be considered when making the whole floor plan!

Oh my God, please don’t use asterisks as a line break.  

“Asteriskasteriskasteriskasteriskasterisk” is the literal worst. As someone who uses almost exclusively screen readers anymore when I read more than a couple paragraphs at a time, I have quit reading stories because there were too many line breaks with a dozen or two asterisks, or OoOoOo, or underscores, or any assortment of characters.  It looks pretty, but it doesn’t sound pretty!

Use hyphens or a coded line break.  On Ao3, that is done with <hr >. Those just cause brief pauses in the reading, so they are perfect for transitions and breaks between scenes!  Listening to a minute straight of “underscore” without pause is grating.  

If you use Microsoft word to write, it will check your document for accessibility (meaning, whether a screen reader can read it) for you, and tell you how to fix any problems it finds!  On Mac, it’s under Tools > Check for Accessibility and on Windows it’s under File > Info > Check for Issues > Inspect Document > Check for Accessibility

I had no idea about this, that’s really useful. When I’ve got the time I’ll go replace my scene break indicators on AO3. This may take some time, considering how many works I have on there though.

a good “old fashioned” scene break indicator is the asterism (⁂), which is a single symbol, if you want something a little pretty but also accessible

Do’s and Don'ts of Designing for Accessibility

Find the PDFs for Do’s and Don’ts of Designing for Accessibility here.