Thread by @LXReads

Wondering what this flood of #SaveA11yBots tweets is about?
Buckle up, I've got a story for ya

1/?

Some background first:
"a11y" stands for "accessibility" (making things accessible to people with disabilities).
The "11" represents the eleven letters in between the "a" and the "y" in the longer word.

Hence, #SaveA11yBots is shorthand for "Save accessibility bots"!

2/

You might ask "So… who are the accessibility bots in #SaveA11yBots?"
Great question, curious reader!

They are any automated Twitter accounts that exist as a public service to make some aspect of Twitter more accessible to people with disabilities.

3/

Many (but not all) of these bots are related to alt text, which is a type of description that exists alongside an image to provide an accurate representation to anyone who cannot see the image itself, such as those with vision-related disabilities.

#SaveA11yBots
4/

I'll come back in a bit to add a branch explaining more about alt text, but staying on topic, your next question about #SaveA11yBots might be "Why do these bots need saving?"
There's a few parts to that answer

5/

First, on February 2 Twitter announced that it would be ending support for their free API (which all of these bots, and many others, depend on) and replacing it with a "paid basic tier".

#SaveA11yBots
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Second, most of them are just side-projects built by helpful developers as a public service to cover for accessibility gaps in the site.

#SaveA11yBots
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Third, there hasn't been precise pricing quoted yet for the new tier, but based off some loose news it'd be prohibitively expensive for any of them to have to pay, which would mean they'll probably be forced to shut down.

#SaveA11yBots
8/

So, that's the "who" and the "why". Next, you might be wondering "What would #SaveA11yBots?"
That's pretty simple, and explained in more depth here:

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Another "what" you might be asking is "What can *I* do to help #SaveA11yBots?"

In short, use the hashtag to talk about why these bots are worth saving:
10/

Also, the CEO made a recent call for feature requests and he turned it into a popularity contest, so please shower the tweets listed in the thread below with your Likes!

11/12

Finally, if you'd like to learn more, bookmark the tweet below, which includes links to most of the bigger threads about #SaveA11yBots:

12/12

Alt text has existed since the early days of the Web, for screen readers (programs that blind or vision-impaired folks use to navigate their computers) to read in place of the image itself, or for browsers to display if the image doesn't load for some reason

#SaveA11yBots
4.1/.7

The reason why #AltText is a big deal *here* is because Twitter had the ground-breaking innovation to make alt text *visible* with their 'ALT' badge and drawer.

This makes it so that even people who don't use a screen reader full-time can benefit from alt text.

4.2/.7

This fantastic thread includes a lot more information about Twitter's 'ALT' badge and how to use #AltText effectively

4.3/.7

Since Twitter's success with the #AltText badge, other companies have followed suit.

Like Slack:
4.4/.7

And Tumblr:

4.5/.7

(Discord has something too, but it's not as upfront as a proper "badge". If you go to "App Settings" / "Text & Media", there's a toggle called "With image descriptions" that makes #AltText visible in tiny, low-contrast, text below any image that has it. It's… not ideal)
4.6/.7

Bhavya's thread here has a bunch more detail on #AltText too

4.7/4.7 (end)

(Bonus: here's a thread on how to add #AltText to your images in Discord)

Here's a #SaveA11yBots video summary, since having alternate formats never hurts!

Update:
Discord has a proper ALT badge now too! (at least in the Android app)

Which makes it all the more valuable for everyone to describe your images in Discord too