Accessible Disco Elysium Posts

because i've already seen etiquette posts going around saying that we should all start rbing directly from op so that op can see the engagement on their own posts.

but what's gonna happen is that now if there's a post with an undescribed image, a person who wants to reblog that post but also wants to be accessible is going to have to ask themself, do i just not reblog this post because it's not accessible? or do i add an ID in my reblog, knowing that this will reduce op's ability to see the notes on their own post? either way i'm leaving somebody out. but this problem is completely avoided if the original post itself contains any necessary descriptions!

if you are new to image descriptions and feeling overwhelmed, here are some things to know that might make it less overwhelming:

a "bad" or very general ID is better than no ID. if you made a beautiful painting of a sunset and know it would take you forever to describe it, well, there's a reason they say a picture is worth a thousand words! you can seriously just say "painting of a sunset" and that is so much better than nothing. even something this simple tells you what it is not. this short post by @mightyoctopus about the importance of adding even a simple ID says it really well.

for screenshots of text, there are handy programs that can convert images of letters into plain text! i don't use one so i can't really speak to this, but i'll link to a post in which @pathos-logical has linked to her favorite OCR tool.

or if it's easy for you to just copy and paste text into the post directly rather than taking a screenshot and then describing the screenshot, that might be less complicated. i know it really depends on how you're using tumblr, though - i imagine this is much easier on desktop than on mobile.

i have never encountered an ID writer who would be upset if op "stole" their ID and added it to the root post. in fact most ID writers actively encourage and even beg ops to do this. so if you do have a post that you posted without an ID and then someone adds one later, the next best thing is to copy and paste their ID into your original post. ID writers also do not mind at all if you edit their ID. and my sense is that it's also completely unnecessary to credit or @ the writer. just steal it! we don't mind!!

i'm not an expert on IDs so i will leave it there. and i do think it's possible to write IDs if all you know is the information in this post! it doesn't have to be intimidating, and it can improve not only other people's ability to engage with your work, but also (with this new tumblr update) your own ability to see that engagement.

if you are past the initial intimidation and want to learn more about the best ways to write IDs to accommodate the different ways people use them, i will just link to my image descriptions tag where i have collected the posts other people have made about this that i have found personally useful when writing IDs.

Image 1: Lilienne is heading into the bay on her boat. Her back is to the viewer, and as she passes the shore near the book shop she waves at Billie Mejean. The painting is framed in white, and the front of the boat goes out of the frame.

Hi! Thank you for the question.

So, in general, most of the time, a screen reader can find the “read more“ button/link and successfully activate it. And, the majority of the time, we can then subsequently read the rest of the post after activating the read more.

However, I want to put heavy emphasis when I say “most of the time.“ Tumblr is notoriously known for being barely usable with a screen reader at best and actively hostile to screen reader users at worst, and there are inconsistencies galore as well as frequent accessibility breaking updates. There are times when I have been able to access a read more one day, and then log on the very next day and find that I am totally unable to find it at all. There are other days where one post allows me to activate it just fine, but another gives me so much trouble that I give up And log off for the day completely in frustration.

For these reasons, as well as several others, it is almost always universally recommended to not put an image description under a read more. The image description should always be in the standard body of the post, and/or in the alt text.

The other big reason why it’s not great to put an image description under a read more is that if you delete your blog, that read more can no longer be activated, so that image description is gone forever even if others can still re-blog other versions of the post.

And, lastly, putting an image description under a read more simply just creates extra steps for disabled Tumblr users that non-disabled users don’t have to do to get access to the post and its content. We are often already doing so many extra steps just to use the website as a whole because of how inaccessible so much of it is, and putting more barriers in the way means that far fewer Blind people are likely to ever see that image description. Or if we do see that post and notice that you have put a description under a read more, we might already be out of spoons for the day and clicking that read more is just another tiring frustration. The description should be readily available And as easy to access as the original image is for fully sighted users if you want to create a truly equitable experience.

Most of the time now on mobile when I attempt to activate a keep reading link, I can’t read the body of the post at all once I do. It is completely unreadable. If it’s a post I really care about, I often find myself resorting to taking a screenshot of the post and running it through OCR software, or sometimes hitting the reblog button to see if I can read it in the draft reblog window which sometimes works but sometimes doesn’t.

I want to suggest that people expand this practice of avoiding keep reading links to any kind of content, not just putting image descriptions under the cut. Image descriptions under the cut is the most egregious use of it, but these days when so much of the time the post is unreadable behind keep reading, it cuts off access to all sorts of information that people put under there. I’ve seen lots of disability oriented posts in particular using keep reading links lately, with only a brief summary of what they plan to talk about above it, and so the rest of the post is effectively unreadable. So at this point in time, I would suggest the best practice is to try and avoid using a keep reading cut off whenever you possibly can. I know it can be inconvenient and sometimes lead to very long posts, but I would much rather see a long post tag than a keep reading these days.

Kim, a man depicted in white and orange, wearing glasses, a bomber jacket, and bellbottoms, runs behind Harry, a man depicted in white and green, wearing a blazer, a tie and flare cut pants.

Harry is running with one hand holding a plastic bag full of tare, some of which is spilling out, and the other hand holding a flashlight illuminating the path ahead. Harry is sweating and around his head is a chaos of thoughts; several portraits of his skills are speaking, he has two thought balls orbiting around him, which is all embellished by several speech bubbles, thought clouds and more shapes.

It shows the outside of the top floor of the Whirling in Rags, a building with large glass windows and a balcony in the corner of the building, with its south part, on the right, being shorter and the west part, in the middle of the piece, being long. It's close to sunset as indicated by the bright yellow light casted on the long balcony and the vibrant, red and orange clouds in the sky.

"VOLITION [Easy: Success] – No. This is somewhere to be. This is all you have, but it's still something. Streets and sodium lights. The sky, the world. You're still alive"

Harry is a middle aged white man with a mullet and sideburns, wearing a green blazer, while Kim is only partially in the frame, only his orange bomber jacket and leather gloves are visible.

YOU - What am I, deranged? A woman doesn’t have to be married. She doesn’t even have to be in a relationship. Also, feminism.

The remedy to this, when in doubt, is to pull up a screen reader or TTS on your own device. That way, you can hear out how things sound. But in general, a couple things to keep in mind:

For multi-image posts: You don't have to repeat the same information in the description of every single image.

If you have a four-image comic, and a character — let's just say a young adult white woman, with brown hair and glasses — features in all those panels, you don't have to repeat that description in every ALT text. The images are going to be read in order, and in context. If a screen reader has to hear "a young adult white woman, with brown hair and glasses" four separate times in quick succession, to say nothing of other recurring characters, that's not a good listening experience!

Yes, if you were to share one of those panels on its own, in some other instance, it might be good to slightly edit the image description, and actually re-include that information. The description of an image is always going to be influenced by the purpose and context of an image — just like images being shared to appreciate the artistry will warrant more description than IDs for memes, where it's best to keep things brief. (And on that topic, this post puts it better than I could.)

And, secondly:

In-post image descriptions should go directly under the image. There should not be commentary in-between the image and the ID.

Imagine if every time you wanted to know what an image was, whether a piece of art or a screenshot of a tweet, you had to hear paragraphs of the artist's statement that presumed you'd seen the art already, or paragraphs of OP's commentary lampooning the tweeter. Imagine if every time anyone posted a graph, you had to read through a short essay presuming you'd seen the graph, but before you actually got to see what the graph was showing.

Yeah, that's the essence of the problem with putting IDs below commentary.

Also, after a point, people will just assume the post is undescribed and skip it! You described your post, you put in the effort to make your post accessible, but you want to make sure it'll have the impact you hope it will, right? Hiding the ID below commentary (or under a read more) is not going to let your effort have the maximum impact.

Here's a visual example of the formatting guideline I just described.