@julesbristowafewbu didn't happen unfortunately, others weren't available. Next meeting May 6th, meanwhile @mattnoyes kindly raised this in the Tech Working Group channel.

Sounds fine to me.

Sounds nice, but not everyone will know? A banner or something sure - maybe forcing alt text (should be permanent).

But is this not a bit intrusive to people just trying to toot?

@louisallaway I think this is meant to be noticeable. That's one reason why we would want to discuss it before doing it.

As I understand, folks on social.coop are actually pretty good about using alt text, though there's room for improvement.

It's also a topic of discussion what constitutes good alt text. Making alt text more visible may help with that, along with reposting some guidelines.

@Louis Allaway. I like the idea of having a banner to announce it for the day, ... or some other form of announcement.

Also, I am wondering about AI-generated alt text for images. I clicked to generate the alt text using AI, then I could edit the text before I l clicked to post. The AI-generated text identified aspects of the picture that I had not thought to describe, and it missed descriptors that I believed were important.

If we announce it the day before, we might post a wiki about how to use the alt text feature and the AI-generated text feature to "Detect text from picture.

I suggest that you use this thread to start a formal proposal for people to vote on. Then, its implementation would be dependent on the Tech Working Group. ... The Organizing Circle discussed it, and we didn't feel it fell within our jurisdiction to decide for membership. Let members start a proposal and vote. Here is the tutorial for how to make a proposal: https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Make_a_proposal

For example, here are a couple things I feel would make a significant impact on the percentage of people who add alt text to their images:

1. Making it so the Edit Media window appears automatically when an image is finished uploading. This will, along the lines of the original proposal, force people to acknowledge the functionality exists and make a conscious decision about adding alt-text or not every time an image is uploaded.

2. Positive reinforcement. We could add a little badge / icon / checkmark to images with alt-text. This will make it immediately clear which images have alt-text to readers who don't use it (but still care about it), while also rewarding posters who choose to add them. It sounds silly but we all know the extents people will go for a colored checkmark.

I know changes like these take development time, and of course I volunteer mine to implementing whatever the community decides.

@Sky Leite a lot of clients already have the latter, I use Tusky which does

@Sky Leite These are probably better long term solutions, but it's also my understanding that they're more complex solutions to implement. And if they're long-term changes, that incurs maintenance complexity (especially when updating versions of mastodon, and then re-applying our custom changes) that these one-off events do not.

@Katanova The idea is to remind/encourage people to write effective alt-text. Which does materially help people. Whether this is an effective way to do that is its own question.

@Evan Boehs This is a clever idea! As a sighted person I write alt text maybe 50% of the time but I rarely read other peoples alt text or have much awareness of what it would be like to be dependent on it.

@Kalebsocial.coop there are many clients out there that do remind or require people to post alt text, but the reason I feel this suggestion is likely to be more useful is that I've seen many people get rid of these reminders by posting text like "a meme" or "a picture" which don't convey any useful information to visually impaired people

@Matt Noyes is there a date by which the twg will have made a decision do you think? Just conscious that the 16th of May is approaching

@Jules Bristow (afewbugs) If I understand @Flancian's feedback correctly, unfortunately it's technically impossible at this stage (too many risks). I haven't changed my vote because I support the idea in principle and the proposal clearly states that it's up to the TWG to approve it if it's technically and easily possible (which doesn't seem to be the case).

@MarieVC (social.coop/MarieVC) @Flancian @Matt Noyes Can I just confirm please that the twg have made a final decision that this is technically unfeasible? Many thanks

Another reason I feel this would be useful is that it would help show people what good alt text looks like - many clients have automatic popups requiring people to write alt text, or a colour changing icon that shows when it is included, but people can write things like "a meme" or "a graph" to deal with that notification without providing information that's useful to screenreader users.

To clarify, I don't use a screenreader myself, so I'm conscious I may be seen as speaking for people, but my partner's dad is completely blind and I have two followers who use screenreaders to my knowledge, which I why I feel it's important to make the Fediverse equally accessible to everyone.

I agree with @Kaleb - token actions such as this do nothing except annoy people - especially in this case, when its not just bad behavior that is being penalized, but even people who do the right thing, and post WITH alt text, will have less engaging posts on on that date due to a lack of images. If you want all text then fix the UX so that it takes an action to specifically exclude an alt text. (e.g. a popup that says "Are you sure you want to post without an Alt text for the visually impaired")

I came late to the discussion, But I appreciate the propossal