@Andre Louis The issue I have with the comparison with explaining an image to someone over the phone is that I always have to expect the person on the other end to know exactly nothing about the image and its context and whatnot.

I have this issue with all images I post. Pictures from 3-D virtual worlds, memes about these virtual worlds, memes about the Fediverse.

And then I have to explain and explain and explain. And if at least one image from a virtual world is involved, I also have to describe and describe because the person on the other end has no idea at all what this virtual world and anything in it looks like, but they're curious.

Granted, on the phone, I have to explain and describe so much because the person on the other end keeps asking me questions. What is this, what is that, what does this mean, what does that mean, what does this look like, what does that look like?

But in the Fediverse, people shouldn't even be required to ask these questions in the first place. Asking questions and waiting for an answer is much more of a hassle in the Fediverse than on the phone.

People shouldn't be required to ask me anything. If they have to ask me for visual detail descriptions or for explanations of certain things, it's almost like they have to ask me for the whole image description in the first place. An incomplete image description feels like no image description at all, just as useless. And not explaining enough feels no better.

To quote you:

Just do... Something, so that the person coming across it has enough context without having to ask for more.

That's my very goal.

But first of all, whenever I post an image, I have to deliver a humongous info dump so that even the last casual outsider who happens upon my image post understands it right away, no matter how niche and obscure the topic is.

I always take into consideration what Average Joe knows. Then I look at what is needed to know to understand my image posts. And then I have to fill the gap. I have to fill the entire gap myself, all the way to some very basics. And that gap is huge.

Sometimes, there are Web sites that can provide the needed explanations. But my understanding has always been that external links are too inconvenient, and everything has to be explained in the post itself, right where the image is.

If I explain a meme, I mention which template it is based on. But I can't just drop the name of the template. I have to explain the template. But the template is an image macro and a snowclone, and so I have to explain what an image macro is and what a snowclone is. Image macros were invented in the Something Awful forums and really exploded on 4chan, and so I have to explain what Something Awful is, what 4chan is, what imageboards are.

None of this is common knowledge that I can expect Average Joe to have, or can I? I'm pretty sure I can't.

On top of that, I always have to explain what the meme text references. And that's always super-obscure. It's either the Fediverse beyond Mastodon, sometimes even the technology of the Fediverse outside Mastodon or the culture in a non-Mastodon Fediverse area. Or it's 3-D virtual worlds of which maybe one in over 200,000 Fediverse users has even only heard of.

Those 25,000 characters were 1,250 characters of explanation of the image itself. Plus 10,000 characters in six explanations for the meme template because I can't expect everyone to be familiar with the "One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor" template and its background. Plus another 12,500 characters in two explanations for the meme text because I can't expect everyone to be familiar with FEP-ef61 and nomadic identity and their background. Half of the whole explanation block is about the context of the meme text.

I mean, I can give one link to the KnowYourMeme page for the template I've used and be done with explaining the template. But linking to external content is inconvenient. People vastly prefer everything being explained in the post.

I've seen it all over this thread. Given the choice between externally-linked explanations and explanations in the post, right where the image is, people vastly prefer explanations in the post because they're infinitely more convenient. It's only when they learn that these explanations would amount to tens of thousands of characters altogether that they see the advantages of external links.

If I just provide a bunch of links, people tend to think I'm weaseling out of a few hundred characters of explanation.

And external explanations are only reliably readily available for meme templates and their backgrounds. It gets trickier for the Fediverse. There is the Join the Fediverse Wiki, but it's still utterly incomplete, and there aren't pages for everything. I can't simply link to an easy-to-understand wiki page for (streams) or for Forkeys or even for certain Forkeys. And even if there's an article on a Fediverse project, the article only covers more or less the technical basics, but it does not explain the culture of this project.

If you want the Misskey culture explained, or if you want the culture on the Forkeys explained, or if you want the Hubzilla culture explained, or if you want Forkeys explained, or if you want (streams) explained, then I'll have to do that. And if you don't want to have to ask, I'll have to do it in the post right away.

It gets even worse when I make memes about virtual worlds. Especially for the particular virtual worlds I post about, there is no general know-it-all wiki on that topic that I could peruse for explanations. There isn't any kind of info site for newbies or interested outsiders whatsoever, especially not with the in-depth technological and/or historical and/or cultural information frequently needed to understand my memes.

Images from these virtual worlds are the most extreme. In addition to extensive explanations, they require extensive visual descriptions that go far beyond the 1,500-character limit that Mastodon, Misskey and their forks not only impose on their own alt-texts, but also on external alt-texts.

I have to intertwine the explanations with visual descriptions. I have to intertwine the visual descriptions with explanations.

And I have to describe a lot. Both sighted and non-sighted people are extremely unlikely to know about these virtual worlds. But both sighted and non-sighted people may be curious about them. After all, hey, there are virtual worlds that actually exist! They're operational! They're alive! The metaverse is a thing that really exists right now!

It's literally like discovering a whole new world. Sighted people who are curious will ignore the context of a post and go wandering about the image and explore it with their eyes.

Blind or visually-impaired people can't do that, but they may want to. They may want to take in all the details of the image, just like sighted people can and do. But they can only do that if I describe the image in all its details. A typically short description that focuses on one or a few elements is as useless to them as no image description at all.

@Alt Text Hall of Fame is of no help for me. That's because all I do is extreme edge-cases that have never been dealt with before. Extreme edge-cases that nobody has any even only remote experience with.

I'm the first to ever meme the Fediverse outside of Mastodon.

I'm the first to ever meme these virtual worlds.

And I'm the first to ever even consider describing virtual world images sufficiently.

None of these three has ever been done before I've tried it. And to this day, in all three cases, I'm still the only one who does it.

In fact, I think I was the very first Fediverse user ever to try and describe images while not being entirely constrained by Mastodon's limits. I was the first to explain images in the post itself where I don't have a 500-character limit rather than in the alt-text, and I think I'm still the only one.

This also means that @Alt Text Hall of Fame is of no help for me because most of what I do to explain and describe an image does not even happen in the alt-text in the first place.

My meme explanations go into the post and not into the alt-text.

My virtual world images get short, very limited, purely visual descriptions in the alt-text and long, full, detailed, informative, explanatory descriptions plus a full set of text transcripts in the post. That's two descriptions for each image. My record is a bit over 1,400 characters of short description in the alt-text and over 60,000 characters of full description in the post, all for the same image. It took me two full days to write them.

All of this is with no precedence. Nobody else does it. There is zero experience with anything even close to it. And there are no definite guidelines for edge-cases like what I do.

I have to define everything myself. I have to cobble my definitions together from other definitions and guidelines and recommendations and other people's image descriptions. And I have to do it all with almost zero feedback.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Memes #Inclusion #A11y #Accessibility