#If you can't read my writing the transcript is in the alt text

[magicwhiskers29]

Yet another result of me being silly in dms with @alto-tenure... We're really asking the important questions here (context under the cut, sort of)

[endrinstone]

tftsmp whitepine au where ivory becomes sir billiam’s maid

[mellosdrawings]

Hey uhh I gotta say I love your twst art (esp. Jamil!!) but the font you use (or is it your handwriting?) is really hard to read, because the E is missing the vertical line, and it gets pushed into other letters, and the H looks like a U or and N so a lot of words get sort of mixed up. Idk if this makes sense, but is it possible for you to change it? If it's your handwriting, I'm sorry for complaining about it. And yeah I am going to make the effort to read the text no matter what bc like I said, I enjoy the art, but I just wanted you to know this, since I think I might not be the only one struggling with this. Thanks!

Yeah I know I have a shitty handwriting, I'm sorry :') Changed it several times because people couldn't read it, then changed to writing in all caps and people still can't read it TwT That's my curse.

I'll try to use an actual font starting from now (posts in queue not comprised, but the ones I'll add next will be with fonts)

ALL PREVIOUS ARTWORKS HAVE JUST BEEN UPDATED WITH TRANSCRIPTS IN THE ALT TEXT.

The things I do for you guys, I swear <3

(Just so you know, for the lol, I'm also terrible at writing on a computer. I keep missing letters and words and the only reason I'm slightly legible is because my autocorrect is doing the work of the Gods. It seems I really have a problem with writing.)

[babygirlsincars]

I haven't written poetry since like i think 2020??? and also i usually write first person poetry so erm. If you can't read the images i provided a transcript of it in the alt text

Anyways! Poem I wrote about basically George from @ininininininstayoutstayout 's amazing fic One Thousand Laps of Jeddah but also just is kinda influenced by him as a whole so some things are a bit wacky which is why i like poetry a lot. the line "There is something inherently human about being hated." is originally (?) from a tiktok i saw of an amazing poem which can be found HERE

Im holding myself back from talking too much about my own writing process and stuff but I've just been heavily inspired by Richard Siken recently which is one of the reasons i got back into poetry :'3

[aspirationatwork]

Do you have or know of any guides on how to format alt text/image IDs? Idk if I'm not using the right keywords or because the search feature here sucks, but I can't seem to find any specific to Tumblr. Sorry if you're not the person to ask though, I've just noticed you're very consistent in using them!

This is a guide I often share, found in the "image descriptions" tag(it does take a bit of scrolling)

And this is a guide provided by the People Accessibility discord server which I will provide a link to below. They provide help to people writing image descriptions, audio transcriptions, etc.

https://discord.com/invite/NMCGqs4m

Personally, I write my image descriptions following a specific structure.

1.) The media and subject, plus any additional information best stated first such as particular aspects of the art style.

2.) A description of the subject, such as a character's appearance.

3.) What the subject is doing.

I also particularly like to emphasize tone when describing an image. If a photograph of a duck, for example, is trying to depict the bird as elegant, you might describe the bird as having "sleek, glossy feathers" as opposed to just stating the color. Some of my favorite IDs I've seen were the ones that made me feel like I was reading something out of a novel because of how rich the word choices were.

Lastly, I consider context and what is needed to provide an equal experience. Sometimes, I'll exclude the subject's appearance when describing a meme because knowing what they look like doesn't necessarily make the joke funnier(unless their appearance is part of the joke). I might also do this if there is a large group of different subjects to avoid clogging up the description.

[princess-of-purple-prose]

Hi there! Please take a look at accessiblepublishing dot ca's guide to image description. There's a few mistakes in your transcribing and since you're sharing templates for other people to copy and paste, these mistakes are just going to multiply. A couple in particular I've noticed are: overly lengthy/confusing descriptors, paragraph breaks, restating plain text (screen readers already read plain text), restating audio, using styles in post, and using personal opinion in descriptors. It's great that you want to help make things more accessible, but please work to standardize your descriptors if you're going to be instructing others.

Hi, anon!! I really appreciate the feedback!! First, I actually have been dragging my feet for ages on fixing our earliest descriptions on the meme templates doc, so I will take this as my push to pare some of them down and make them clearer! I'll do my best to respond to everything here, going under the assumption that you mostly mean the descriptions I post on Tumblr rather than the ones on the doc:

Overly lengthy descriptors: I'm always working on this! I imagine my biggest offense on this is for comic IDs, but I generally intend for those to convey some manner of the style and flow of the art. I would actually appreciate being sent feedback on specific offenders if you want to show me where I've gone wrong!

Paragraph breaks: I write IDs as intended for plain text rather than alt, generally, but alt on Tumblr supports line breaks anyway. (The meme doc was also aimed for plain text, given the "ID: / End ID" formatting.) As I have seen a few sources saying paragraph breaks aid readability and I (a sighted person) definitely can't read long blocks of text, and I don't think I'm going to stop using paragraph breaks. I'm genuinely sorry if this is an inconvenience, but it is always okay to take my IDs and edit them as necessary if they don't measure up! (Also, I swear to god I don't say this to be petty, I'm trying to cover my bases because I haven't seen paragraph breaks being advised against in descriptions before: the accessiblepublishing guide also uses paragraph breaks in its examples for alt text? Do you have reasoning or other sources to explain why paragraph breaks are bad?)

Plain text: I take cues from posts like this one on plain text! Tl;dr, plain text is still important for low vision users who may not use screenreaders, and screenreaders also can struggle with special fonts or gradient text, so it's worth adding transcripts

Restating audio: I'm... not sure what this means? Are you talking about audio transcriptions? I will take advice on those if given, sorry I didn't catch your meaning!

Styles: I try very hard to use fully plain text except bold fonts for IDs, with the very occasional phrase in caps lock or italics, and wasn't aware I was overusing formatting otherwise? The people's accessibility server once advised my friend and me on doing a series of long comic descriptions and generally stated that bold was the most readable kind of special formatting, so that's what I go for. I'll keep an eye on it!

Personal opinions: I'll keep an eye on this as well, thanks for letting me know! (I'd thought I was doing a good job, do you have examples for me to look over?)

Sorry this was so long, I wanted to be thorough! Thanks again anon, I am always open to feedback on my descriptions!! Have a great day!!!

[izzymeadows]

I'm back on my D&D Stranger Things bullshit!

Okay i made a post about how Will being called the cleric of the Party by Mike could mean he's gonna heal the Upside Down, but i can't find the post because tumblr hates letting us search stuff in our own blogs.

(EDIT: Found it. I'm gonna use this opportunity to say clerics aren't actually the only full healer class in d&d and in fact i got a comment telling me because god forbid people read the words "is considered to be" and understand that who's writing actually *knows* that said consideration is wrong lol not to add that clerics ARE TOTALLY THE ONLY HEALER CLASS IN AD&D WHICH IS THE EDITION THESE CHARACTERS PLAY i would actually say the druid is as much of a full healer as the cleric, but in AD&D the druid is a cleric subclass anyway. Also this is not about druids)

ANYWAY

Behold, the benefits of a paladin!

(Source: AD&D Player's Handbook, find it in archive.org) (transcription in alt text. I highlighted "the ability to 'lay on hands'" and "the ability to cure disease of any sort" in pale blue)

Laying on hands and curing diseases sound like the perfect skills for Mike to help Will heal the UD, don't they?

Even in my biggest byler doubt moments, i just can't think it's a coincidence that the Duffers chose Mike and Will to be the paladin and the cleric, the two D&D classes that are the most intertwined. Like, "D&D 5e dropped the need for paladins to serve a deity to make a bigger difference between the two classes" level of intertwined.

For more ST related D&D stuff, you can see my super short post about the Thessalhydra!

[verdantmeadows]

I'd think so too, but if you put no alt text at all, I'd make sure you put immediately that there's a transcription or description later on or put the transcription/description first. Otherwise the alt text would just be read as

IMAGE

And then whatever personal stuff you say here!

And I know that as someone who reads a screenreader, I'd go, "Oh, there's no description for these images, so I'm just gonna scroll past onto the next post." So if there was a transcript, I might not realize it because if there's no description for the image, there's no point in me reading the rest of the post because it's talking about an image I can't see.

So based on what I know, my recommendation would probably be to leave a description in the alt text like "a comic of character A and B from XYZ" and then, before writing any personal notes, captions, etc., say "transcription available here, under cut, etc." And again even though I use alt text/a screenreader I'm not an expert on alt text guidelines, so if someone else knows better feel free to correct me

Alt text is an accessibility tool for many people, primarily those who are blind or visually disabled. It is not appropriate to ever use it as a punchline for a joke to tell a joke. Doing so takes away its reliability and trustworthiness. There are people who are INCAPABLE OF SEEING AN IMAGE OR FULLY SEEING AN IMAGE OTHERWISE. Using alt text to tell jokes HURTS THESE PEOPLE.

This post has like 8,000 notes. I'm so disappointed in how many people think this okay, but even more sad that many people don't understand how this is harmful or what alt text is even for. Please don't propagate or encourage these jokes. You are misusing and actively harming an accessibility tool. If you didn't know that this is what it was for, now you do know! Please do your part and don't spread such things.

[mushroomjar]

[Image Description: A screenshot of a reblog by IncorrectImageDescriptions. They've reblogged a photo of a dog's paws and wrote an incorrect image description for it. Their image description reads: "Image description: a bunch of angry, joyless (and a few polite and friendly, but not many) people sit in a circle and accuse a joke-teller of being ableist - not understanding that by saying so they are ableist themselves by assuming people won't understand the joke, and by assuming they need to protect people who might not need protected." End Image Description]

I'm, I, I literally cannot make this up, this person is genuinely ableist and disgusting. I would confront them about this directly but I have them blocked and I don't want to unblock them.

I don't know how to express to fellow abled people how taking an accessibility tool and making a relentless mockery of it is not funny. How self-centered can you be to defend your ableist "bit" behind "Um ackshually you're the ones being ableist because you think people can't take a joke." Newsflash, ableism and inaccessibility aren't a joke. They're not funny. Never have been, never will be, no matter which way you try to spin it.

I also hate people putting words in my mouth. I never said anything about "protecting" people. All I want is for people to stop making a mockery of accessibility. It's every day of logging into this app, no one provides transcriptions, no one provides Image Descriptions, people that don't work to make their blog accessible mocking those who do. You have no right to mock accessibility features if you don't use them or don't even try to be accessible. (Disclaimer, I am aware there are people that don't write Image Descriptions because of a lack of spoons or other reasons, but this isn't about them, because those aren't the people making fun of accessibility.)

And if it's this frustrating for me, an abled person, then what is it like for a disabled person? Someone who actually does need these image descriptions? These captions? These accessibility features you keep mocking? Why do you think it's funny to make fun of tools they need? Why do you think it's funny to make fun of accessibility? You are ableist. Accept it, sit with it, and try to change it.

TL;DR: incorrectimagedescriptions is accusing me and others blocking/reporting them of being the ableist ones for thinking people "can't take a joke." I ask them and others to question why they think it's funny to make fun of accessibility features, and consider if maybe they truly are the ones being ableist.

P.S, if you are going to add an image to my post, please provide an Image Description for it, or at least alt text

Hi, please block @/incorrectimagedescriptions, it's a blog purposefully providing incorrect image descriptions (I guess you could gather that from the URL but still). Also if you know of a way to report them and maybe get their blog taken down please do tell

Edit: Many people in the notes have pointed out, flash warning for their blog header. I didn't see their header when checking the blog so thanks for pointing it out. Also it seems that the most that can be done is report them for spam as none of the other categories fit, but hopefully @staff will do something about this