← Feed
@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
Replies (1)
-
@jupiter_rowland
Just like, surprise, surprise, Mastodon's alt-text police is not blind.
I'm not "Mastodon's alt text police", I'm a human who thinks the text box will be misused, and is clunky to use for all sorts of people, authors included.
I believe that user-agents should make accessible all the metadata in a post, exactly because of the diversity of the Fediverse as software. Just like someone can make an object whose understanding depends on the exact date of posting, even backdating. Or an object that gets frequently edited. Or an object that is referenced by a sock-puppet account.
Except for professional Web accessibility experts, literally nobody on Mastodon seems to know what alt-text really is for.
Exactly. Most people (intersectionally even!) are not accessibility experts. At the very best they have some sense of "hey I should probably describe this image" since the text field is prominent, but virtually nobody will read an accessibility spec.
For my own example, as I cannot speak for others, I often add "impressionistic" details to the alt text of photos, just because the image itself can have qualities beyond just the objects contained in it. Which a sighted person will obviously perceive, even if maybe in a different way than I wrote down.
I think that's a very dogmatic view on the feature. Its a free text field, and if the internet taught us anything is that people will use free text fields for anything.
But let me tell you something: [long list of places that don't have an alt button]
Most of the services you listed rarely even have an useful alt text:
A lot of blog/static just plain don't;Corporate social media often has erroneous or incomplete machine-generated text with no machine-readable disclosure;Comics, famously XKCD, but many others I've met along the years, have absolutely unrelated alt text;
Let alone would have use for easy access to it. If anything Mastodon is the place where you can most reliably find useful alt text on the internet, by volume if not by ratio.
My character limit is over 30,000 times higher than on Mastodon.
No I don't think people put text in the alt box exclusively because of character limits, I've seen plenty of people, myself included, who put stuff there despite a generous limit on the instance.
I cannot speak to ableism or not, but I'm grateful that "people on the internet put the text, but on the wrong box" is the problems we get to discuss :)
Open ##2135114