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#ImageDescriptionMeta

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Replied in thread
Jupiter Rowland
@Logan 5 and 999 others First of all: You must never put line breaks into alt-text. Ever. (https://www.tpgi.com/short-note-on-coding-alt-text/, https://joinfediverse.wiki/Draft:Captions#Line_breaks)

Besides, that will certainly not be the day that I'll post my first image after more than a year.

It's tedious enough to properly describe my original images at the necessary level of detail, and one image takes me many hours to describe, sometimes up to two full days, morning to evening. Not joking here. I certainly won't put extra effort into turning at least the 900 characters of "short" description that go into the alt-text into a poem. And I definitely will not also turn the additional 20,000, 40,000, 60,000 characters of long description that go into the post into a poem as well. (And yes, I can post 60,000+ characters in one go, and I have done so in the past. My character limit is 16,777,215.)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta
TPGi · Short note on coding alt text - TPGiThe other day, in relation to a github comment, I was asked by my friend Mike[tm]Smith “Can alt have line breaks in it or does that do weird things to...
#cwimagedescriptionmeta
Replied in thread
Jupiter Rowland
@Justin Derrick The question, however, is: What is "high-quality"? How is it defined?

Would the bot go by the definition valid for commercial/scientific/technological websites and blogs, i.e. ideally no more than 125 characters, and only a short and concise visual description with no further information?

Or would the bot go by Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's standards, i.e. the longer and more detailed, the better, any and all extra information is welcome in alt-text (because it doesn't fit into the toot), and the limit is 1,500 characters?

That is, if it were for me, the bot would go look both for alt-texts and for image descriptions in the post text body and judge both. Because I do both at the same time for my original images. An extremely detailed long image description in the post itself (character limit for post and alt-texts combined here: over 16 million) that also comes with all necessary explanations and transcripts of all text in the image, plus an alt-text that's as detailed as 1,500 characters (minus notification about the long description in the post) allow, but with no explanations, and I usually have to leave out text transcripts as well because they're too many.

You may say the alt-text is superfluous if it's just a much shorter version of the long description. But as long as the Mastodon HOA demands there be an alt-text to every image, no matter what (especially seeing as I always hide my image posts behind summaries/content warnings, so you can't see right of the bat that there's a long image description in the post), I add alt-texts to my original images.

I'm actually curious about how the bot would judge my descriptions. Maybe it'd flag them "inadequate" because it notices that the bits of text in the image are not transcribed in the alt-text. Maybe it'd be irritated because I have headlines in my long image descriptions, because they're so long that they need two levels of headlines. Maybe it'd flag them "inadequate" because it goes strictly by WCAG, and a) the alt-texts exceed 200 characters, b) long image descriptions do not belong into the text body by any known official accessibility standards, and c) neither my alt-texts nor my long descriptions are limited to what's supposed to be important within the context of the post.

Anyway, in the meantime, you can follow the account @Alt Text Hall of Fame and the hashtag #AltTextHallOfFame.

CC: @Simon Brooke

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #MastodonHOA #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
#cwimagedescriptionmeta
Replied in thread
Jupiter Rowland
@-0--1- @David G. Smith Still, first of all, if I posted an image without an alt-text (which I'd never do), AltBot would have to assume full admin rights over the Hubzilla channel that I'm currently commenting from because that's the only way for another Fediverse actor to alter the source code of my posts.

Altering the source code of the post is necessary because Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte neither have a dedicated alt-text field, nor are images file attachments there. Rather, images are embedded directly into the post, in-line, just the same way blogs handle images. And alt-text has to be woven into the image-embedding code in the post. Thus, the post itself has to be altered.

So, assuming AltBot actually manages to circumvent the two most advanced permissions systems in the Fediverse, it would have to trace back an image that it perceives as a file attachment to where exactly the embedding code for that particular image is in the post.

It would have to be able to both understand and write the specific flavour of BBcode used by Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte.

It would have to, for example, take this piece of code...
[zrl=https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/photos/jupiter_rowland/image/b1e7bf9c-07d8-45b6-90bb-f43e27199295][zmg=800x533]https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/photo/b1e7bf9c-07d8-45b6-90bb-f43e27199295-2.jpg[/zmg][/zrl]
...and edit it into this.
[zrl=https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/photos/jupiter_rowland/image/b1e7bf9c-07d8-45b6-90bb-f43e27199295][zmg=https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/photo/b1e7bf9c-07d8-45b6-90bb-f43e27199295-2.jpg]Digital shaded rendering of the main building of the Universal Campus, a downloadable island location for 3-D virtual worlds based on OpenSimulator. The camera position is about three metres or ten feet above the ground. The camera is tilted slightly upward and rotated slightly to the left from the building's longitudinal axis. The futuristic building is over 200 metres long, stretching far into the distance, and its front is about 50 metres wide. Its structure is mostly textured to resemble brushed stainless steel, and almost everything in-between is grey tinted glass. The main entrance of the building in the middle of the front has two pairs of glass doors. They are surrounded by a massive complex geometrical structure, very roughly reminiscent of a vintage video game spacecraft with the front facing upward. Four huge cylindrical pillars carry the roof end, the outer two of which extend beyond it. All are tilted away from the landing area in front of the building and at the same time outward to the sides. The sides of the building are slightly tilted themselves. In the distance, a large geodesic dome rises from the building. There is a large circular area in front of the main entrance as well as several wide paths. They have light concrete textures, and they are lined with low walls with almost white concrete textures. Furthermore, various shrubs and trees decorate the scenery.[/zmg][/zrl]

Not to mention that AltBot would require extensive detail niche knowledge about the topic covered by the image to be able to whip up the above alt-text in the first place. (By the way: The alt-text example is genuine. I've actually used it. And it's an extremely whittled-down version of the long image description of the same image in the post itself, a description which has to be the longest in the entire Fediverse.)

Ideally, AltBot would do so without flagging the post as edited.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta
#cwimagedescriptionmeta
Replied in thread
Jupiter Rowland
@-0--1- By the way, I'll accept that AltBot is
AMAZINGLY GOOD

when it's better at describing and explaining images about extremely obscure niche topics accurately than experts on these topics with years of experience.

I've yet to encounter an AI that outdoes my own image-describing in accuracy and level of detail. This, by the way, is likely to require knowledge that only I have.

CC: @David G. Smith

#AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta
hub.netzgemeinde.euUniversal Campus: The mother of all mega-regionsOpenSim's famous Universal Campus and a picture of its main building; CW: long (62,514 characters, including 1,747 characters of actual post text and 60,553 characters of image description)
#cwimagedescriptionmeta
Replied in thread
Jupiter Rowland
@Alan Levine Judging by the advice I've read so far, it's always best to describe the colour using basic colours plus attributes such as brightness, saturation and what other basic colour or colours the colour you describe is leaning towards.

For example, "light, yellowish orange", "a darker, slightly less saturated, slightly more brownish tone of orange", "various shades of slightly yellowish, medium-light-to-medium brown", "a solid, slightly pale medium blue with a minimal hint of green", "a medium-dark wood texture, slightly reddish, slightly greyish". All actually used by me in the long descriptions in (content warning: eye contact) this image post.

If the name of the colour plays a role, use it and then describe the colour in the same way as above. Blind or visually-impaired people may not know what Prussian blue or Burgundy red looks like.

@Stefan Bohacek @❄️Faerie❄️ @cobalt @Tanya McGee Wheatley 💜🥰 What do you say, is that appropriate, complete overkill or still insufficient?

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta
#cwimagedescriptionmeta
Replied in thread
Jupiter Rowland
@Jim Salter Four points:

  • Don't use line feeds in alt-text. Always make it one paragraph.
  • Always end your sentences properly, e.g. with a full stop (that's a period for y'all Americans).
  • Don't use quotes like on a computer keyboard. They may break alt-text. No, seriously, they may. Use actual, typographically correct quote (“”) instead.
  • All-caps may irritate screen readers. I know that all text in an image must be transcribed verbatim, but all-caps are an exception. Transcribe them normally and, if you deem it important, tell people separately that the text is in all-caps.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
#cwimagedescriptionmeta
Replied in thread
Jupiter Rowland
@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
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
#accessibility
Replied in thread
Jupiter Rowland
@Mungen Cakes ✅ In general, how do you prefer meme templates used in a meme to be explained?

Do you prefer a link to someplace that specialises in these things and is competent enough, e.g. KnowYourMeme?

Or do you say that external links are too much of a hassle, and absolutely everything must be explained in the post itself?

If the latter, keep in mind that this can easily be a whole lot of explanation. My most recent meme post required a whole of nine explanations with altogether 25,000 characters, all of which went into that one post. Six of these explanations could have been covered by KnowYourMeme. I'm not quite convinced that tens of thousands of characters of explanations for one image are actually more accessible and inclusive than a handful of external links.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #Memes #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Inclusion #A11y #Accessibility
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
#accessibility
Jupiter Rowland
@Elena Brescacin @Charlotte Joanne @Andre Louis @Pratik Patel @Devin Prater :blind: @Robert Kingett, blind

I'm terribly sorry for writing to you out of the blue, but absolutely all more acceptable ways of trying to get some feedback or advice from Mastodon users have failed me this week. And I take it that you are in the right position to give me competent feedback or advice in accessibility.

So here's my question right away: What do blind users prefer when it comes to explaining images? Externally linked explanations? Or everything explained in the post, even if this amounts to tens of thousands of characters of only explanation?

Now allow me to elaborate. This is going to be long.

I am someone who always tries to get image descriptions and explanations as right as possible. You may or may know that already.

So here's the thing: I've started posting memes again just recently. And I'm trying hard to max out the accessibility of my meme posts. Since I'm not on Mastodon, I don't have Mastodon's limitations in my way. In particular, I don't have character limits to worry about. This means that I can describe and especially explain a whole lot of things in the post itself rather than having to squeeze it into the alt-text.

Until now, it has always looked to me like it's better to give all necessary explanations in the post than to link to external explanations. One or a few people have told me so. And I've run a poll a while ago, and eight out of the nine sighted voters as well as the one sole non-sighted voter preferred explanations in the post over externally-linked explanations.

Now, if I want to explain a meme post in a way that everyone understands it, I have to explain a lot. I've written a half-experimental meme post based on the "One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor" meme. Here is a link to that post.

So I had to explain the post itself. But I also had to explain the "One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor" meme. In order for people to understand that explanation, I had to explain snowclones, image macros and advice animals. In order for people to understand these three extra explanations, I also had to explain Something Awful and 4chan including a general explanation of imageboards. Also, in order for people to understand my post, I had to explain FEP-ef61, nomadic identity, Hubzilla, the streams repository and the whole 14-year history of the latter two from Mistpark from 2010 to this year's Forte and their various underlying protocols.

That one meme post required nine explanations with some 25,000 characters. And in fact, I could have explained The Lord of the Rings and the ActivityPub protocol on top of that, but I took both for common enough knowledge that my post is understandable enough without explaining them.

Again, 25,000 characters of explanations for one image, just so the image can be understood without any external information. Apparently, it's exactly this which the Fediverse prefers.

But I can't believe that this is actually what the Fediverse prefers. First of all, I've been told again and again that tens of thousands of characters are not accessible because they're much too long, regardless of where I put them. It's hard to believe that they're supposed to still be more accessible than external links. Besides, my information almost entirely comes from sighted people.

So here's my question again: Do blind people really prefer 25,000 characters of explanation for one meme post over externally-linked explanations?

(Deliberately without a content warning this time to make this post more easily accessible.)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Memes #Inclusion #A11y #Accessibility
#accessibility
Replied in thread
Jupiter Rowland
@The Nexus of Privacy

About point 5


See three comments above. I'm already trying. But I'm pretty sure I'm not nearly trying hard enough.

I can't call out behaviour that I don't see. And I don't see any racist, sexist, misogynist, ableist, xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic etc. behaviour in my stream, simply because I've semi-muted some 85% of my contacts to keep as much off-topic cruft away from my stream as possible.

All I can do is adapt my own way of posting and minimise the damage I'm potentially dealing. But even that's limited. Take image posts, for example. My image descriptions can't possibly not be ableist to someone, even if each one of my images has two descriptions. My pictures of @juno may potentially be sexist to say the least. And I still haven't replaced my profile pictures with images without eye contact to protect neurodiverse users.

My own contacts aren't intersectional enough themselves. I have at least one, maybe two Black women amongst the 15% who are permitted to send me their posts. But even that one trans woman amongst these 15% is white. And I do not follow anyone first who doesn't have anything to say that's interesting within the scope of my channel.

(6/7)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Intersectional #Intersectionality #Ableist #Ableism #Sexist #Sexism #Misogynist #Misogyny #Xenophobic #Xenophobia #Homophobic #Homophobia #Transphobic #Transphobia #Racist #Racism
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
#racism
Replied in thread
Jupiter Rowland
@The Nexus of Privacy I'm someone who usually follows all advice about good Fediverse behaviour to a tee. That is, as far as Hubzilla lets me, as long as it doesn't require me to abandon Hubzilla's own culture in favour of only Mastodon's culture, and as long as it doesn't require me to abandon a number of Hubzilla's key features because Mastodon doesn't have them.

Some may say I'm overdoing the Mastodon-style content warning thing, at least in posts. Hubzilla doesn't support content warning in comments, and if I reply to something, it's always a comment and never a post. Otherwise you'd get one big honking Mastodon-style content warning here. You do get a huge pile of filter-triggering hashtags, though.

Some may say I'm overdoing the image description thing. My image descriptions in alt-text are among the longest in the Fediverse, and these are my short descriptions. My long descriptions for the same images which go into the posts are the longest, most detailed, most explanatory image descriptions in the Fediverse, full stop. And I keep raising my own standards. I only have one image description which I don't consider outdated, obsolete and sub-standard yet.

So I'd normally love to fulfill everything in your post to a tee by my definition of "a tee". And my definition of "to a tee" is everyone else's definition of "Are you completely insane, man?!" But this time, it's more difficult. Call me racist, but it's more difficult.

(1/7)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Hubzilla #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagmeta #Filters #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Racist #Racism
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
#racism
Replied in thread
Jupiter Rowland
@Andre Louis It'd be even harder if I were to go all the way and try to make the whole description comprehensible to people who were born deaf-blind, and who have no idea of sound at all.

But I guess I won't spend the rest of the day, and it's morning here, describing this image.

Come to think of it, 25,000 characters are actually optimistic, seeing as I'd probably have to explain a hundred times or more how something affects the sound.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
#cwimagedescriptionmeta
Replied in thread
Jupiter Rowland
@Andre Louis I think I could whip up an image description so detailed and explanatory that it should leave no question unanswered, no matter how curious someone may be, but at the same time so long that not even you would be willing to have it read to you. I expect it to exceed 15,000 characters, maybe 20,000 or 25,000.

After all, I see dozens upon dozens of pieces of written text which, to my understanding, all have to be transcribed verbatim.

Also, in order to make my description understandable right away without anyone having to ask me or Google anything, I'd have to go all the way and explain subtractive synthesis in the image description and add a little history of electronic musical instruments, at least from 1963 to 1970.

In other words, I'd become ableist by overloading people with information in order to avoid being ableist by not tellling people right away what they may need to know. The same catch I'm in with my usual image descriptions.

As always, the image description would go into the post text body. And then I'd have to distill a purely visual description without text transcripts for the alt-text from it.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta
#cwimagedescriptionmeta
Replied in thread
Jupiter Rowland
@Valerie Roney Hey, I even transcribe text that, in the image as I post it, is too small for anyone to read.

I don't do so in the alt-text; I have to do it in my long, full, detailed description which goes into the post because Mastodon, Misskey and their forks cut longer alt-text off at the 1,500-character mark. But I do it, and my alt-texts always remind readers of the existence of a long description with transcripts in the post itself.

I've been told that transcribing text that's illegible in the image itself is unnecessary. But I do it anyway, and I do it because nobody can read it.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Transcript #Transcripts
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
#transcripts
Replied in thread
Jupiter Rowland
@Stefan Bohacek Well, I already do, and I guess you know by now.

At least I don't think my image descriptions are "basic". They may be "plain" and not "inspiring", but if "basic" with no drivel in-between already amounts to anything between 25,000 and over 60,000 characters, should I really decorate my image descriptions and inflate them further?

#AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AI #AIVsHuman #HumanVsAI
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
#humanvsai
Replied in thread
Jupiter Rowland
@Mikal with a k There are two hashtags for that: #Alt4me and #AltText4me.

But they're more miss than hit. Even simple images usually don't get any community description. And the more obscure the knowledge required to describe the image is, the less likely it is for someone to provide a description.

I myself would rather spend another three months not posting a single image because describing it appropriately is so tedious and time-consuming than rely on someone else trying to describe an image they don't even get because it's too niche.

CC: @Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
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Replied in thread
Jupiter Rowland
@Stefan Bohacek My contribution is my first image post in three months. As usual, I've described the image appropriately. This, however, led to me outdoing myself again.

The alt-text with the "short" description is precisely 1,500 characters long. The actual image description in the post is over 60,000 characters long. And I've had to limit myself in both cases.

Here's the post. Or try to find it under the hashtag #UniversalCampus if it has found its way to your instance.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #GlobalAccessibilityAwarenessDay #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta
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Replied in thread
Jupiter Rowland
@Regezi Hubzilla doesn't have a culture of accessibility at all. It isn't even known which pages or "apps" are accessible in the first place. Besides, the huge majority of my readers are on Mastodon.

What I do is:

I write a fairly short, purely visual description for the alt-text. I do so to satisfy those who absolutely demand there be an image description in the alt-text, no matter if there's already one elsewhere.

Still in the alt-text, this short visual description is followed by a note that says that the actual, fully detailed image description with explanations, text transcripts etc. can be found in the post text. And if you're on Mastodon or a similar Twitter-mimicking microblogging project, the description is in the post text, hidden behind a long post content warning, whereas if you're on Friendica, Hubzilla or (streams), the image description will follow right below the image itself. Or sometimes, when I post multiple images, below the block of embedded images so as not to have a wall of text separate the images.

The alt-text practically always exceeds 800 characters regardless which, I guess, is still much too much for many Mastodon users, also seeing as Hubzilla does not support line feeds in alt-text.

And yes, the actual image description goes into the post itself where hardly any Mastodon user would expect it and where Mastodon's culture sees no place for image descriptions. The post itself is always hidden behing a summary/content warning that reads, "CW: long post (<four or five-digit number> characters" in order to protect those on the official Mastodon mobile app and everyone else on Mastodon who doesn't want to see posts with over 500 characters.

For example, here's my most recent image post which was three months ago. Fair warning: When I say I write image descriptions that are tens of thousands of characters long, I mean it.

At a bit over 25,000 characters, the description is nowhere near my longest, and while it's the most up-to-date, I found it lacking after posting it already, and I already consider it outdated. If this link opens as a Web page in a browser instead of as a toot in your Mastodon app, then sorry, I can't show you how your Mastodon app renders this post. I could tell you a hashtag under which to find that post, but troet.cafe doesn't know any of my image posts.

CC: @Stefan Bohacek

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta
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