Would people be interested in disabling images in favour of alt text for World Sight Day and the Global Accessibility Awareness Day?
Jules Bristow (afewbugs)
Public
Seen by 245
This toot proposes disabling images to highlight the importance of alt text descriptions on Global Accessibility Awareness Day and World Sight Day, May 16 and October 10. I wondered whether this was something Social Coop thought would be a good idea?
Dynamic Sun 21 Apr 2024 12:44AM
Sounds fine to me.
Louis Allaway Tue 23 Apr 2024 2:02PM
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?
Brian Vaughan Tue 23 Apr 2024 6:03PM
@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.
Caitlin Waddick, @[email protected] Thu 25 Apr 2024 7:07PM
@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.
Caitlin Waddick, @[email protected] Thu 25 Apr 2024 7:12PM
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
Poll Created Fri 26 Apr 2024 11:55AM
Should we disable image posting for Global Accessibilty day on 16 May in favour of alt text? Closed Fri 3 May 2024 11:00AM
What is the decision you need to make?
Whether this is something we would like social.coop to do, providing it's technically feasible.
Why is this important?
To highlight how important it is for the Fediverse to be accessible to everyone, and hopefully demonstrate to other instances that this is a good idea that can spread more widely.
What are you asking people to do?
Please help decide whether this is something we should proceed with.
For this proposal to pass, we need the majority of members to vote Agree.
If you Disagree, say why and what needs to change for you to Agree.
Results
| Results | Option | % of points | Voters | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Agree | 50.0% | 21 |
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| Abstain | 23.8% | 10 |
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| Disagree | 26.2% | 11 |
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| Block | 0.0% | 0 | ||
| Undecided | 0% | 368 |
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42 of 410 people have participated (10%)
Sky Leite
Fri 26 Apr 2024 11:55AM
(note: I am not visually impaired)
I love the idea of raising awareness about alt-text, but I feel like this is a bit extreme without actually accomplishing much. If the problem we're trying to solve is that people tend to not use alt-text, I feel like we could use established patterns to encourage people to do so, instead of forcing people to acknowledge that it exists for a day.
It seems I'm character-limited here so I'll expand on my point on a reply.
Sky Leite Fri 26 Apr 2024 12:09PM
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:
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.
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.
Jules Bristow (afewbugs) Fri 26 Apr 2024 12:16PM
@Sky Leite a lot of clients already have the latter, I use Tusky which does
Calix · Wed 24 Apr 2024 2:21PM
@julesbristowafewbu didn't happen unfortunately, others weren't available. Next meeting May 6th, meanwhile @mattnoyes kindly raised this in the Tech Working Group channel.