Thread by @RobotHugsComic

hey twitter - there's a lot of good awareness now about the fact that all users can add image descriptions to twitter for people who use screen readers. Here's some tips on how to do this well:
(This is my job)

you generally don't have to say 'image of' or 'photograph of'. Just describe what the image is conveying - what the user is intended to get out of seeing it. Some examples:

Tweet: Don't worry TO, It's going to get better soon!!
Unhelpful description: Toronto weather forecast
Helpful description: Forecast for Toronto temperatures, showing -18 Celsius today improving to -1 Celsius by Tuesday.

Tweet: Tired of going to conferences where the speaker lineup looks like this
Unhelpful description: headshots of featured conference speakers
Helpful: 8 headshots of featured conference speakers that are all white and male
(Don't @ me, this is to demo intent)

Tweet: "U of T's new building has some accessibility issues..."
Unhelpful description: staircase with pillar in the middle
Helpful description: a blind man collides with a large pillar that interrupts a handrail going up the middle of a large staircase

so: Don't overthink it. Make it as short as possible while describing what the photo is trying to convey. Any description is better than no description.

Note: these guidelines are what i use after doing research and consulting with visually impaired users for my work. Opinions on the best kind of description may differ - accessible design is a diverse field! I encourage you to do your own research as well.

oh, in response to a question: It's ok to mention colour if it's relevant to an image! Many screen-reader users are partially signed and use descriptions to clarify blurry/indistinct images. Also folks do understand the concept of colour...

here are some more potential examples because i love you all:

charts are hard! my attempt:
tweet: We have a new prime number and it’s 23 million digits long
Description: graph showing length of known prime numbers over time, starting at under 10 digits 1588 and increasing dramatically since mid 1900s to over 10 million digits in early 2000s

trying to conveying the joke/meaning?
description: dogs outside looking around. one dog is looking suspiciously with narrowed eyes at the picture taker.
(if you see your tweet don't feel called out! It's just an example)

oh! I should amend this - if it's a personal thing you don't have to be impersonal about it! This could read 'my dogs are looking around outside. Ruffles is looking suspiciously at me with narrowed eyes'.

ANYWAYS if anyone wants me to show the kind of description i might add to a particular image or example just @ me and I'll do my best!

i really want to reiterate that for social media in particular, personal/opinion descriptions are ok (as long as they describe the intent of the image!). i might post a selfie with description 'a selfie of me where i think my purple hair looks really cute today'

i think there's a misconception that accessibility always has to be formal and stiff. When doing 3rd party/pro content, it should err on objective, but social media is also an emotion and expressive space and image descriptions can try to capture that

seriously everyone don't stress just do your best. it will become more natural with time, i promise. you're all great!

Good moooorning everyone. I'm going to add a few more notes here based on some questions I got yesterday.

1) people pointed out that I didn't explain how to enable this setting,. My bad! On your computer or device, go to settings and privacy>accessibility and 'compose image descriptions' is an option. There will then be a field when you add an image. (not supported on tweetdeck)

2) the reason you don't need to write 'image of Bart Simpson on a skateboard' is that screen readers already know that there's an image. They typically announce something like 'image: (the description you wrote)", so 'image: image of Bart Simpson' is redundant.

3) You won't see the description after you've added it to an image, but it has become a part of the image info that screen readers see. If you want to see the description attached to an image ("alt text") on an image from your computer...

Chrome/firefox: right click on image, choose 'inspect' or 'inspect element' and the "alt=...' text in the highlighted field will be the description attached.

There are also a bunch of extensions you can add to your browser to make them visible if you want to get an appreciation for how little people actually do proper alt text across the internet and how good you are for trying!

(4) If you want to go even deeper, you can play around with some screen readers! Android has Voice Assistant found in setting > accessibility > vision, and it has a fun tutorial you can work through.

Apple products use VoiceOver. NVDA is also a free screen reader you can install and play around with, and Windows 7 and later have Narrator.

Google any of these for examples on how people use them and how to play around with them!

accessibility is a super rewarding and deep topic, and if you're interested there are tons of resources to check out. But you don't have to be an expert to do your part! Being a thoughtful poster and taking an extra 30 seconds to add descriptions puts you well ahead of the pack.

I think as a final part of this thread, I do consulting and training on digital accessibility and if you're a non-profit or community organization who has a question, just reach out and I'll try to answer or point you at a resource.