#i read that some screen readers work better with alt text and some do better with post description so i went with both

[farahsamboolents]

image ID: a digital painting made to mimic an oil paint style of Eddie Munson in a range of brown, orange, and cyan blue colours, playing his guitar and throwing his head back.

[askablindperson]

In what way does alt text serve as an accessibility tool for blind people? Do you use text to speech? I'm having trouble imagining that. I suppose I'm in general not understanding how a blind person might use Tumblr, but I'm particularly interested in the function of alt text.

In short, yes. We use text to speech (among other access technology like braille displays) very frequently to navigate online spaces. Text to speech software specifically designed for blind people are called screen readers, and when use on computers, they enable us to navigate the entire interface using the keyboard instead of the mouse And hear everything on screen, as long as those things are accessible. The same applies for touchscreens on smart phones and tablets, just instead of using keyboard commands, it alters the way touch affect the screen so we hear what we touch before anything actually gets activated. That part is hard to explain via text, but you should be able to find many videos online of blind people demonstrating how they use their phones.

As you may be able to guess, images are not exactly going to be accessible for text to speech software. Blindness screen readers are getting better and better at incorporating OCR (optical character recognition) software to help pick up text in images, and rudimentary AI driven Image descriptions, but they are still nowhere near enough for us to get an accurate understanding of what is in an image the majority of the time without a human made description.

Now I’m not exactly a programmer so the terminology I use might get kind of wonky here, but when you use the alt text feature, the text you write as an image description effectively gets sort of embedded onto the image itself. That way, when a screen reader lands on that image, Instead of having to employ artificial intelligences to make mediocre guesses, it will read out exactly the text you wrote in the alt text section.

Not only that, but the majority of blind people are not completely blind, and usually still have at least some amount of residual vision. So there are many blind people who may not have access to a screen reader, but who may struggle to visually interpret what is in an image without being able to click the alt text button and read a description. Plus, it benefits folks with visual processing disorders as well, where their visual acuity might be fine, but their brain’s ability to interpret what they are seeing is not. Being able to click the alt text icon in the corner of an image and read a text description Can help that person better interpret what they are seeing in the image, too.

Granted, in most cases, typing out an image description in the body of the post instead of in the alt text section often works just as well, so that is also an option. But there are many other posts in my image descriptions tag that go over the pros and cons of that, so I won’t digress into it here.

Utilizing alt text or any kind of image description on all of your social media posts that contain images is single-handedly one of the simplest and most effective things you can do to directly help blind people, even if you don’t know any blind people, and even if you think no blind people would be following you. There are more of us than you might think, and we have just as many varied interests and hobbies and beliefs as everyone else, so where there are people, there will also be blind people. We don’t only hang out in spaces to talk exclusively about blindness, we also hang out in fashion Facebook groups and tech subreddits and political Twitter hashtags and gaming related discord servers and on and on and on. Even if you don’t think a blind person would follow you, You can’t know that for sure, and adding image descriptions is one of the most effective ways to accommodate us even if you don’t know we’re there.

I hope this helps give you a clearer understanding of just how important alt text and image descriptions as a whole are for blind accessibility, and how we make use of those tools when they are available.

[ladytabletop]

Do you happen to have any resources regarding accessibility in ttrpg design? About design, colours, phrasing of text or anything else that could be helpful!

I spent wayyyyy too long compiling all this - but it's important, and I appreciate you asking!!

Accessibility is a subject near and dear to my heart, and I will say up front that I'm not sure universal (aka accessible to everyone) design is possible, because people's needs can vary even within the same subset of similar disabilities (such as limited vision or blindness). BUT that doesn't mean we don't try to design for and make our games available to as many people as possible. Mismatch by Kat Holmes is a great read on design for accessibility in general, as is Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez. You might also check out literally anything Alice Wong has ever done.

To start, I recommend this article on the Lenses of Accessibility.

(for reference, this article is about web/graphic design, so I'm going to try and distill the most salient points for game design)

We are going to primarily focus on a few of these lenses:

Color

Font

Images & Icons

Layout

Readability

Structure

Keyboard

More details under the cut.

Color

Why does color matter? Well, for starters, there's a lot of colorblind people out there. Contrast affects readability. Autistic people and people who suffer from occular migraines might be affected by particular vivid colors. There's lots of reasons to consider color and the work it is doing in your piece, but in general you can provide a black and white, high contrast version of your game to help users.

There are tools out there to figure out if your contrast meets certain readability standards, such as this one.

Font

Dyslexia and other visual processing issues can make font choice really important. Plus, some fonts really affect readability. Additionally, line height, justification, and size of text can affect readability.

Best practice would be to provide a plain-text version of your game (and beware of "dyslexia-friendly" fonts which may or may not actually help - sticking to a basic readability font like Arial, Tahoma, or Verdana, is safest). I like this style guide for reference.

Images & Icons

For visually-impaired people, it's important to use alt-text, descriptions, and/or captions to help screenreaders properly translate images. Tons and tons of details that could go into this, but there are better people than me to describe it.

Layout

We've talked about this a bit, but there's tons of resources for this. There was recently a great writeup about Yazeba's Bed and Breakfast in terms of layout that I highly recommend.

Readability

More of the thing we've already talked about - it really is a combination of all the other lenses that comes down to readability. Audio versions of your game are always a good way to avoid the restrictions of screen readers, but can be expensive to produce.

Structure

This is tables. Tables are a nightmare for screenreaders, but including them as images can also be a problem. The short solution is "don't use tables" but that's not necessarily great for seeing people. The section in this blog is really great when talking about options for structure.

Keyboard

Debated on whether to include this, but given how many games are being read as purely digital files, I think it's important to have workable interactive elements that can be navigated through without a mouse. Some of that is going to come down to the programs being used to open your files. But if there are things you can do on your end (such as labeling form fillable fields on an interactive character sheet), they're worth doing!

Please understand that this isn't an exhaustive list. There's tons of resources out there and technology and standards are constantly changing.

It's also is important to note that even doing one of these things is helpful. You might look at this list and go "wow that's too hard" but I promise you, it's worth it. My games do not all have accessible versions! That's something I'm trying to rectify. The biggest part of that for me is thinking about accessibility from the start instead of at the end! But we can start today, and that's better than not starting.

The most important thing to remember are that disabled people are NOT a monolith - needs will differ from person to person. Accessible design makes gaming better for everyone!

Final Resources:

Accessibility in InDesign

Accessible-RPG

A11Y

Accessible Design for Teams

[futurebird]

Please, if possible, add alt text to your images. (Describe every image, please.)

I've seen people post before about how every image posted, ideally ought to have an image description. They generally get a lot of support from people already doing it, but also some objections, questions and even anger.

So let me first say: I understand that not everyone can add image descriptions for a variety of reasons. But, if i grab 100 random posts with images here it's lucky if one or two have a description. Now I know that not that many of you have some serious reason why you can't describe the damn images.

This simply isn't the case on other social platforms I frequent. Mastodon would be well above 60% described. Even twitter (before I left that hell-hole) had like 20% of the images described. Now both of these platforms have popular tools that will remind you if you forget a description, and frankly it's easier to edit descriptions there... so some of this is Tumblr's Fault. Tumblr make image descriptions easier and make a reminder!

But it's also about user culture. People here just don't think image descriptions matter. But they do!

I WILL NOT reblog posts if they don't have image descriptions. So I end up adding them myself, and frankly I pass over MANY posts that I would have quickly reblogged but I don't have the time to be everyone's mom and describe everything. So, I just do that for the really great posts I can't pass up. But having a description will make more people share your work since you aren't making work for us if we want to share it.

Why do I need to describe images? Because many people use screen readers and if a post makes no sense unless you know what's in the image your post is useless to all of those people.

Why do I need to describe art? Because people who are blind, and people with vision impairments also like art. My brother's kid loves my ant drawings. They're legally blind, but they can see if they enlarge an image and look close up, the description give them the context they need to understand what they are looking at. Frankly, I read image descriptions all the time myself when I find a post confusing, so it's helpful to... literal minded people too. And it just makes your post seem more complete and exciting. Why miss out on putting a neat description.

I don't know what to write! Imagine you are reading the post over the phone to a friend. What would you say "And then there is that meme with the guys in the hot tub, sitting five feet apart" put that. Even something short is better than nothing. Just explain the post for everyone. Since it's YOUR post you know best what matters most about the image. When I add descriptions after the fact they can get a little long since it's not my post and I don't know what matters most. OP's description in the alt text is the best description.

If you have other questions you can ask me. I'll find out if I don't know.

(Did you know you can add alt text to your images by clicking the "…" symbol in the lower-left corner of an image when writing a post? Having the description attached to the image is the best way and only the OP can do this, but I also often add descriptions in brackets [ ] when I reblog cool art, cats and ant stuff. So, if you can't add a description yourself, it's OK, there are people who will help.)

[mibyledraws]

alt text 101 for artists

I’m not an accessibilty expert, but I gathered these tips here and there, and it has really been helping me writing better alt texts - and I hope they will help others too!

Alternative text is a description of an image that can be read by a screen reader. It also can help the understanding of an image for people who don't use screen readers.

What do you write?

It all goes down to including what is relevant to give the user an accurate idea of your artwork:

the medium you used to make the artwork (is it a digital illustration? a traditional oil painting? a graphite pencil sketchbook doodle?)

the subject of the artwork

anything that is relevant for understanding the meaning of the artwork. For instance, is the lighting important, or does it bring a particular meaning or mood?

Write sentences - don’t just throw away key words. EDIT: don't write full sentences, but phrases and fragments to keep your description concise

adding one more thing after getting feedback: keep it concise! Under 125 characters (even 100 is best)

Where/how do I add it?

The alt text feature is more or less obvious on the apps we usually post on. In doubt, please just search for it on a web browser, you’ll find how to add it in the blink of an eye :)

On Twitter

enable the alt text reminder! Everytime you post an image, it will remind you to add alt text if you forgot it. Go in your settings, then “accessibility, display and languages”. Then “accessibility”, and in the media section, check the “receive image description reminder” box.

on web browser: once you’ve uploaded your image, click on “add description” under it.

on the app: once you’ve uploaded your image, click on the “+alt” bubble in the right bottom corner that appeared on your image.

On Instagram

at the bottom of the posting page, go in “advanced settings”, then “accessibility”, then “write the alt text”.

On Tumblr

once you’ve uploaded your image, click on the three dots icon that appears when your mouse is on the image, then click on “update the description”.

On Mastodon

once you’ve uploaded your image, click on the “description missing” message that appears on it.

On your website (portfolio, shops, etc)

Where and how you can add it depends on the platforms but there’s always a way! My tip for this would be to schedule yourself an alt text audit of your website to take a moment when you would search how to do it and when you would add all the necessary alt texts! I’d also encourage you to pay attention to some other accessibility features - for instance contrast between background and text. There are lots of ressources out there and I admit it can sound overwhelming: digital accessibility is an expertise, a job field in itself after all. In my opinion, taking it a few steps at a time is a good way to go! For instance I like to do little accessibility audits of my portfolio every once in a while and check a new area that I might have missed before.

I forgot to add it, what should I do?

On some platforms, you can add it after posting if needed - it’s the case on the Instagram app for instance. Always try to see if you can add it afterwards. If you can’t, add it in the replies (if it’s on twitter for instance) or edit the body/caption of your post if you can change this but can’t change the alt text.

Adding it as a “simple description” instead of an alt text that will be read by a screen reader in lieu of the image isn’t perfect, but having it somewhere very close to the image in plain text that will get to be read by screen readers is way better than nothing to my knowledge :)

It's Disability Pride Month (July, when I'm writing this)

I wanted to take some time to encourage you to take some time and energy this month, and at anytime of the year, when you can, to learn about Disability Justice. I’m not the best at explaining what it is, and how much there is at stake. I’m better at this, making small guides about what fellow artists can do to make their work more welcoming to disabled people. But it doesn’t mean Disability Justice isn’t close to my heart and that I shouldn’t even mention it.

There’s a documentary about the Disability Rights movement that I can only highly recommend - it’s Crip Camp. It’s on netflix, and even watchable in full on Youtube.

Pay attention to us, disabled people, to what we have to say. ��Nothing about us without us”: our perspectives and opinions are those you must focus on when it comes to disability and to our lives.

[mushroomjar]

May I ask why you do image descriptions?

Yes, of course! You asked so nicely, how could I not

I write image descriptions mainly for blind/visually impaired people. Many of them use screen readers, which, when faced with an image, will just say "image", so they need some text describing the image, and then the screen reader will read that text and then they'll know what the image shows

That's not the only thing image descriptions are useful for! There are other people that benefit from them, I remember hearing about some people with ADHD who finds image descriptions helpful as well, or just people who have slow internet that won't let images load. There are also blind people that don't use screen readers but still benefit from image descriptions, and I'm sure there are more examples I'm forgetting about here!

There are many sites that have alternative text options, which work similarly to image descriptions, but some sites' alt text options aren't very good/accessible (like Tumblr's), so image descriptions can be a better alternative in those situations. Whether someone prefers image descriptions or alt text tends to vary from person to person. But since most images I see/reblog don't even have alt text, I tend to write image descriptions for those. Just a way to help make this site/my blog more accessible for everyone!

I hope that helps explain! You can ask more questions if you need to. I also have a tag in which I reblog posts about accessibility, including tips and reasons to write image descriptions! Feel free to look through it ("#accessibility tag"). Have a nice day!

[romanarose]

On the topic of inclusivity there’s something I’ve been wondering!

I’m here, we have an option to do different colors for the words. In the past, I’ve used it to highlight something, to go with aesthetic (like green for IYWBW or red blessed be the fruit) or in Moon knight stories, I do bold for Marc’s thoughts, italics for Steven and red for Jake, something I started since sssb

But idk if it makes it hard to read

So, anyone with any sort of issues seeing or reading or whatever, whether blindness, dyslexia or any disability, please answer

Just to keep this clearer, if you don’t have a disability or anything that could effect reading, please just hit see results as I’m largely looking for disabled voices

If it causes issues with screen reader, please elaborate! If there’s a work around I’d love to keep the colored words but I’m not gonna if someone can’t read

Additionally if there’s something we can do in fanfiction to help accessibility, like something that impairs a screen reader we can change, let me know. I’m trying to do some research on the topic.

I know alt text is something I have GOT to get better about and I’m going to make an effort on that

Anything else?

[butchdarling]

Hi, thanks for all your IDs! I'm new to Tumblr and want to write IDs. Are there etiquettes that I should take note of, like which posts to write IDs for and which not to? Any tags I should look out for? I came from Reddit and I'm aware that not all users want to have IDs on their posts, there's probably something similar here.

Hi, first of all you're very welcome for the descriptions! It's always nice to hear that my efforts are appreciated :)

Ideally, any post with images should also have a description for those images. Any post that doesn't already have an ID in the original post is one that's appropriate to add a description to. Even if someone else already wrote a description in a reblog, you're allowed to write your own if you want to. I personally haven't encountered anyone who has been upset when I've written a description? I think that's more an individual thing than something specific to a certain type of post.

There's not a consensus on what format works best for image descriptions, but alt text or plain text (not colored and normal size) directly below the image in the body of the post are generally considered the most accessible. Alt text tends to work better for screen readers, and plain text works better for some people who need descriptions but don't use screen readers. I personally use alt text for posts with a lot of images and plain text for posts with only a few. I've also seen people put a short description in alt text and a more detailed one in body text.

Other etiquette includes indicating when a description starts and ends. I use brackets and start and end with [ID / End ID] but some other formats I’ve seen include “Start ID / End ID” of “Image description / End image description” and being objective in your descriptions. If you're describing a picture of a dog as a "cute puppy," you're telling the reader what to think instead of letting them come to their own conclusion.

As for tags I know some people like to sort their posts as “described” for posts with IDs and “undescribed” or “no ID” for posts without. I find most of my descriptions either from people I follow or from looking in the notes of specific posts as opposed to searching tags so I'm not much help there, but here is a link to a post listing a whole bunch of accounts that make image descriptions.

There isn't really one way to write image descriptions because people have different accessibility needs, but even a simple description is better than no description. The basic format I usually go with is this:

[ID: A (type of image, painting, photo, etc) of (subject; if it's fan art I like to include the source) doing (action, this can really be as detailed or as simple as you want.) End ID]

In general, I go with more simple descriptions for comedic posts and more detailed ones for art. My number one tip is to follow people who write and reblog descriptions and to read them! I've picked up a lot of formats and phrases I use a lot in descriptions from people I follow.

If you're looking for more resources, I’m going to point you towards my mutual Kay @pathos-logical ‘s accessibility tag that has a bunch of good posts on how to write descriptions. You're also welcome to send me another ask or DM me if you'd like ^^

[anistarrose]

Hey, I'm trying to be more conscientious about putting image descriptions on the things I'm posting and I was wondering if it's better to have them as a separate text or in the alt text embedded in the image? Thanks for your help!

thank you so much for asking! I'm always happy to talk about this — so happy that my replies get pretty long, in fact — so skip to the bottom if you just wants some examples.

short answer: either is better than none, but both is actually the most accessible to people with different needs.

long answer: there's pros and cons to each. a lot of people who use primarily screen readers like alt text because it's read out immediately, and don't have to hear "image image image" for comics or whatnot before getting to the description, nor mistakenly skip a post because they can't tell yet that it's described. however, tumblr in particular has two problems:

glitch where alt text occasionally fails to save in a draft or gets deleted on reblogs

bad options for displaying alt text directly, which impacts (among others) low-vision people who would want to read alt text with enlarged font, in order to take in details of the image they can't make out by sight (unless using XKit Rewritten's AccessKit, which I will always recommend, but that's not an option for mobile users)

there's also an argument that IDs being invisible to most sighted people doesn't do much to encourage, educate, or remind people to include them, tbh.

so what can you do? one option is to include the same alt text as image description (placing the ID directly under the image, because remember, flow for screen readers is important). I like to lead with "ID from alt," in order to clarify to screen reader users that they can skip the ID, and help differentiate it from the other option I'm about to describe. this should be intuitive, but here's a random example where I did this for a text post meme (link).

option two is to include a short description in the alt text, and a more detailed explanation in-post. this can let screen reader users instantly know that the post is described, and decide whether they're interested in it, but it maintains an in-post description for others to benefit from too. here's an example of me doing this in a post about IDs (link), and here's an example of my mutual describing art like this (link).

are either of these options objectively perfectly correct? no, but few guidelines for IDs really are. the only things I'll add are to not use small text, italics, colored text, etc in image descriptions, since those can induce readability issues for low vision folks. no read mores either, for obvious reasons (annoying and glitchy). as far as I know, indents are fine, and some people like those to make the IDs more visually differentiable.

again, thank you so much for asking! I hope this helps, and it means a lot that you're working on writing more IDs!

[bodgei]

Do I keep trying for accessibility?

I know this isn’t gonna go anyplace, I don’t really have followers here and although I follow people here, since there is no way for me to read my dashboard I don’t think anyone will read this. I started trying to use this site again about a year ago, but there is no way to make it readable for me. I can’t read posts. Something about the site coding means I have to restart a screen reader for each line brake. 

like this

and this

I have been asking for and suggesting reasonable accommodations since March - with not much in the was of response from the staff - depending on how you count it early March, second attempt first week of September, and the last update was 11-9 (basically ‘give us what phone you are using and we will see what we can do about the app. I gave them the info and they haven’t said anything to me since) I posted to humans asking how long I should wait to hear back - nothing, I tried to blaze it (hoping a mod would look at it and reach out, I didn’t expect them to actually let it blaze. Them letting something less than positive out there? LOL) also nothing. 

So here is the thing, accessibility is hard. It takes time and money, and the staff is overburdened with everyone coming here. But here’s the thing, if they had starting addressing it in March this wouldn’t be an issue at this point. They could have been working on it for months before we got here. 

Here are my suggestions as someone who is working on accessibility at her job: 

Accessibility NEEDS to be part of your FAQs and a choice for your service tickets. I searched the FAQ and could only turn up a short thing about alt text - for tickets there is “Customize your blog” and “something else” 

 on the app serif fonts should be an option, with both light and dark           background.

 look into a accessible fonts there are tons of them out there (I know sans have been sold as more accessible and for some they are, but not for everyone. 

There needs to be a way to make your dashboard have a dark serif font on a light background. I can make my blog look like that - so I can post but I can’t read my dashboard (guess what 4th person to touch my service ticket, low contrast doesn't have a serif font, so the wait for that answer was not productive) 

Also, from my reading of the case law around websites, you need to be offering different sized fonts.  

Twitter is going away, so basically I’ll be out there looking for a place that, or without social. I guess I will have a ton of spare time.    

The TOG fandom is here, so I will never really be a part of it. Once twitter is gone I will have some affinity groups on discord - but the over arching fandom? So much of it comes back to this site and without pulling whole posts off into Word to change the font I can’t even know if it is something I want to read (also I use likes to denote the posts I want to try to read and culturally this site is super shitty about that) 

One last thing - every bit of accessibility added helps non disabled people as well. 

For my fandom friends from twitter and discord, how many of you had issues when dark mode was taken away? Think about how you would feel if the staff response was “you never needed that, you just need to try harder” and then they ghost you. And then every time you try harder your fellow fans are talking about how shitty it is for people to do the only thing that, ironically, is allowing you to read that post. 

Do I care enough about this site to fight to make it better? Because I think that is what the staff isn’t understanding - I am trying to help them make this site better.

OK this really is the last thing, have some song lyrics: (from Working In A Coal Mine by  Lee Dorsey)

workin' in a coal mine Goin' down, down, down Workin' in a coal mine Oops, about to slip down Workin' in a coal mine Goin' down, down, down Workin' in a coal mine Oops, about to slip down'Course I make a little money Haulin' coal by the ton But when Saturday rolls around I'm too tired for havin' funToo tired for havin' I'm just workin' in a coal mine Goin' down, down, down Workin' in a coal mine Oops, about to slip down Workin' in a coal mine Goin' down, down, down Workin' in a coal mine Oops, about to slip downLord, I'm so tired   

[accessibleaesthetics]

Hi! Do you have ressources or ideas about describing images in another language? Notably: being bilingual, I might post in either of the two languages I speak. How can I write alt text in a way that won't be confusing to my readers whose screen readers are in either language? (I'm assuming screen readers can't switch from one language to the other just by guessing.) [1/2]

And in the case that my image contains text in one language, but my post is in the other. Is it okay to translate the text in my alt? And if I don't have the time or spoons to do so, is it better to write the text in the language that it is on the picture, or to just write "text in [language]"? [2/2]

What a great question! Generally speaking, screen readers can't switch between languages on their own; that's why you need language properties. While a page has an overall main language property, you can set certain parts of the text to different languages with the right coding! I've never tried that with alt text though, so I'm unsure if that works.

In any case, unfortunately, I don't think you can do any of that on individual posts or images on Tumblr (I've tried adding the HTML coding to a text post and got no results on my screen reader, though it's been a little while since I've tested).

Now, some screen readers, such as VoiceOver, are able to switch between languages that have different alphabets even if the change happens mid-sentence. So if you wrote the alt text in Japanese, mine would read it just fine even though it's set to English. But if you aren't lucky enough to be using a language with that unique of a writing system, each person's screen reader is probably going to read the text and alt text as best it can using its default language rules, whatever those are set to for that user.

I'd say your best bet would be to provide both, though that might be easier to do via image description that alt text.

Do my followers have any other suggestions?

[army-of-bee-assassins]

back with more questions regarding image descriptions!!

let's say there is an artwork for a fandom that is specific to one country mostly. (Czechia in this example) since the thing the fandom is based on is in Czech. should I write the image description in English or in Czech?

also I've heard somewhere that proper writing should be used in them, is that true? like if the original text is caps lock I should put it to regular. or when no punctuation is used, I should add it.

i hope these aren't stupid, questions. I'm thinking of adding descriptions to all pictures on my art sideblog and I want to do it right :)!!

hi there! sorry for the late response on this one!

so for your first question, i would write the image description in czech in that case! generally speaking, i would write in the language that most of the post's audience will be using. or perhaps whatever language the op was using. you can also do the image description in more than one language (like english and czech for example) if you want. but one language will generally be sufficient.

in terms of proper grammar in image descriptions, i am not sure that it is vital (tho people are welcome to correct me on this), but i believe that it is preferred by some people. i usually use proper capitalization and punctuation in my ids. but again, any id is better than none.

as for correcting punctuation and capitalization when transcribing text, usually the rule of thumb is to transcribe the text as-is, without editing anything. the main exception would be for an honest-to-god typo (like fully a mistake, not a misspelling that was added for comedic effect) that may affect the post's legibility. in that case, you can usually correct the spelling. but otherwise i wouldn't edit the capitalization, spelling, or punctuation. if something would be truly incomprehensible for a screen reader (like something with a lot of words intentionally misspelled), then you might transcribe it as-is, followed by a "translation"/plain text of what it's meant to say.

when it comes to things that are in all caps - there are some mixed thoughts on this. i think these days most screen readers will read all caps just normally, but certain words may instead be read as an acronym. for example, "it" in all caps might be read as "I-T", like the acronym for "information technology." another thing to note is that no screen reader (as far as i'm aware) will make any note of something being in all caps. this means that when all caps are used for emphasis, a screen reader user has no way of knowing that the emphasis was there. lastly - and maybe this is just a personal preference and doesn't extend to other people - i find it kind of difficult to read a long stretch of text (like, more than a few sentences) that is in all caps. for all of these reasons listed, i often like to transcribe all caps with normal capitalization, just with a note that indicates that it was in all caps. for example: "The sign reads: [in all caps] 'do not enter'". these sorts of notes can also be added when all caps are used for emphasis. however - i'm honestly not sure if there's an agreed best practice on the transcription of all caps text. or if there is, i still need to learn about it.

just as a general note for alt text and image descriptions - a great way to learn a bit more about how screen readers work is to try out the screen reader on your phone! pretty much all modern phones have a screen reader in the accessibility settings, and you can set up a quick shortcut to turn it on and off with ease. for my phone, i just hold down both volume keys for a few seconds to turn it on. once the screen reader is on, swipe left or right to change what is highlighted and being read, and double tap to select what is highlighted. there are more settings than that, but that's what you need for just basic navigation. once you've figured out how to use your screen reader, try it out on different tumblr posts to see what it's like, and try it out on alt text or image descriptions that you write to see if they read well.

thanks for the thoughtful questions again!

[seriously-mike]

So You Want To Use AI-Generated Images Commercially?

Fuck off. And keep fucking off until you're out of my sight. Not because of any moral issues, but because whatever the marketing goons tried to sell you, they're ripping you off and bullshitting you with a straight face.

First, the generators, despite being merely large-scale statistical models, have no concept of consistency. The level of human interference into generation process to keep everything consistent between images is large enough at the general level to have you hire an actual artist who will do it by hand instead. At specific level, it's outright hopeless.

I saw a good example in a Facebook reel today. Some goth chick fed the frames from a five-second video of her getting up and walking towards the camera into an image generator with what I assume is the same prompt and the result was a jittery mess with details being drawn completely differently every frame, even despite the Image-To-Image process trying to stick to the original concept at least a little bit.

Another one was a guy trying to have the generator draw the portraits of four public personalities: Ralph Baer, Shigeru Miyamoto, Andrzej Sapkowski and a fourth guy I forgot. Not just every one was in a different style, but Miyamoto's likeness went off the rails like an absolute motherfuck. It added some twenty years on top of his current age and made him barely recognizable, if that.

Second, time spent on refining the prompts, yanking the lever and binning failed attempts is time wasted. Particularly to those even dumber than you who have no idea how the entire shitshow works, but demand Results (With A Capital R) in less time than required to load the model and run a render with enough steps to get something barely convincing. Look, even I don't exactly know how it works beyond mathemagics and fairy dust.

Third, 3/4s of what you read about image generators online is complete horseshit. That includes positive and negative prompts. If you know how the original datasets were built (read: a web crawled bot scraped images and their alt texts off Google Images and made them into a database), it becomes obvious. A lot of folks bang terms like "4k photoshopped trending on artstation" into positive prompts like fucking apes, thinking it will yield results - it won't. Particularly thanks to the nature of alt-text, which is widely used by screen readers for visually impaired people, so it needs to be short, sensible and to the point. And negative prompts are magical thinking as well. Realize this: when the datasets were built, they did not include any of the typical AI-generated fuckups like distorted torsos, too many limbs etcetera. This becomes obvious when you get the thing you explicitly asked the generator to avoid over and over again. And finally, you need to remember that StableDiffusion asking you to set the image dimensions as multiplies of 64 is there for a Reason. The Reason being, 64 by 64 pixels is the smallest area the model can render, and even then it's often a part of a larger element described in general terms.

Fourth, online generators themselves are a scam, more or less. Some defend themselves by having their own, custom-built datasets, like Leonardo AI - these guys dared to build a Stable Diffusion 2.1 datasets when everyone else sticks to 1.5 version. Others, like mage.space, are bullshitting you - when I went through the list of the generators they want you to pay ten bucks a month for, I found nothing but stuff available for free on HuggingFace and CivitAI, based on SD1.5. Half of them I already had downloaded. Not to mention, online generators usually don't have the fancy plugins you can use with your local machine install (I do know that LeonardoAI lets you use ControlNets, and that shit is next-level even despite the general wonkiness described above). That, of course, is true for StableDiffusion, but Dall-E is just as shit and Midjourney might do a couple of things better, but it still wipes out in a good few areas.

Image generators are good only for memes, shitposts and Tijuana bibles. And you'd need a special kind of schmuck to pay for any of those.

[thumperdaetime]

if you do want "reach" on Ao3 consider: (source: I've published over 40 fics since 2014, and I believe it's is why the ones that I consider popular are popular)

posting your fic in multiple places. not everyone is on ao3, consider other fanfic specific webbed sights -some of the best fics I have read were exclusive through personal connections on google docs. You could also consider opening things like a kofi for sharing writing if you want. (altho its important you don't link any commerce avenues to Ao3. it's against policy and will get your account deleted, for legal reasons)

joining/making community of people who share your passion for fan works or a certain fandom. and then working to make it a Nice place to share these things, by supporting other artist. the most engagement I ever got on ao3 was due to the fact that I had joined discords specifically focused on my fandom, and all of us would wait with bated breath for fics to be written and shared. so we could go read comment and share them in other places.

supporting other fan works in general! comments and kudos often contain a link back to your profile! if you give a thoughtful comment (or a comment at all on a obscure work). and I often check the profiles of comments from like-minded people to see if they have any works that might fit my tastes.

Share your fics in public spaces. things like a tumblr post with a copy of your description and an image of your tags can help people who aren't constantly on Ao3 remember that there are cool fics out there.

work on your writing skills in general. people are more likely to share writing that is well crafted. and while it's completely valid, (and honestly joyful for me personally) to post or read something that isn't completely polished. refining your skills can help make you stand out.

making your fics Acessable! more people will enjoy your fan works if they Can actually consume them! Ao3 supports alt text for images. and that's a great start to making more people Able to enjoy your works. but consider also looking into HOw to write alt tex in ways that are actually helpful to screen readers. along with how to break your text up visually so dyslexic readers can better read your works. (there are tags for these things too! and people who need/prefer these accommodations Will use those!)

Working to slow pace of fandom. i hear time and again from fandom elders (elders lol, I mean anyone like 30 and above and that is NOt elderly) that the immidancy of media in the modern age has shortened the amount of time people are doing fandom things. (which hurts fanfiction culture hard because it takes so much energy and time to write!). things like competing Streaming services, time crunches at media corporations, algorithmic fandom spaces, and the push to commodify of hobbies All affect the way the public interacts with fanworks. staying educated and vocal about what you think is right, and ways we can stop profit from being the main driver in creative works can and will help all of us get more time to write and share and read fics. (without feeling left behind) - see also: letting yourself be behind in fandom, if you publish a moving work on a piece of media that's not currently being aired it is likely that people will read it and get re-excited about it. hell I watched all of M*A*S*H (1972) and devoured whole swaths of the fanfics available because of gifs I saw on tumbr in 2020. and I probably would have started writing my own fics there, if it hadn't been for that meddling pandemic, and the seasonal depression too.

having a schedule! this one can be tricky exspeishaly on ao3 where you are not (And Should NOT) be getting any financial compensation for posting. but if you can manage to have a regular posting routine it means that people who enjoy your fics can know when to come check for them. I've only done this twice. one I had mostly written out (through the support of friends) and just decided that posting a chapter a week would be reasonable and motivating. the other time I had a strong outline and idea of what I wanted and had the luxury of working on them daily. but those remain the most commented on fics I've ever done!

nothing pisses me off more than when i see a fic on ao3 talking about reach. "this ship isn't here but i added them for reach" "this fandom tag isn't necessary but i'm adding it for reach" "reposting for reach" STOP IT!!!! this is not tiktok this is not twitter this is an ARCHIVE this is not how it works!!!

[acidcorrodes]

Okay, I actually have a serious question. I'm working on making a new blog for Dmitry since i think the lack of updated aesthetics here might in fact be keeping people from interacting. There's also the fact that I've been focusing on other things rather than actively seeking out interactions like I intend to do, but that's not the point.

Anyway, as I work on the new blog setup and especially the aesthetics and graphics of it, I was wondering a few things concerning accessibility in particular.

I'd greatly appreciate input on this, as disability inclusion is very important to me.

Font options

Are tumblr's default font options for text posts accessible to low-vision users and users who rely on screen readers? i'm particularly thinking of the small font option and the colored text options, as well as the chat font:

This is a chat font sample.

I am aware that fancy unicode symbol "text" doesn't parse well with screen-readers and, from my own experience, can be difficult to read. I'm strictly referring to whatever text formatting can be done using Tumblr's built-in text editor and regular keyboard usage. I often write from my phone, so I'm aware of some readability issues with some formatting options people use (like extra spacing and indents), both in text posts and in outlinks such as carrd documents and the like.

Images

When it comes to graphics like on pinned posts and promo posts, or the header graphics people use in replies: is this a problem for screen readers? Additionally, for icon and gif usage in replies, how should alt-text address these?

Information Pages and Outlinks

I'll be real, most carrd pages and google docs I've seen are terrible in terms of accessibility. I flat-out won't write with people whose pages I can't read for this reason — if it won't open on my phone or it's micro-sized on my huge laptop screen, I won't bother. I'm very partial to Tumblr's own custom theme options, which allow pages to be added: it doesn't rely on third parties, you can format with HTML tags, it's always there, and it's neat and easy to link to. I intend to write my information pages on the custom theme most likely, but I'm wondering if there's been issues with opening those links. For example, would it be better to have a mobile version of the links where the information is on separate posts that can be navigated to? I don't know, just brainstorming here a little.

Bottom Line

As a roleplayer, how can I make my content more accessible for users —particularly visually impaired, but anyone's welcome to chip in— and what are common problems you've spotted in this regard?

[sereniv]

I have a question for those who often need alt text! also what should i tag this as?

So as someone who does not need alt text generally, i was wondering how you (individually) prefer alt text to be?

ive seen guides and ill go by the guides, but for me, in my mind i imagine the most descriptive the better. But also the most simply worded is better, because i imagine if i had my eyes closed id want something simple but descriptive

How does it work for you?

because i see some alt text explain very simple, but when i look at the image its describing, i can see things that are missed out

Like, sometimes the description is bare bones.

Is that enough or is it nice if someone added any extra details they thought would be nice to know in tags?

Maybe im thinking too much as a seeing person

Also for screen readers I know not to make posts with leet speak

but is there anything more i can do to make reading a post more pleasent?