#accessibleagere

Time to talk about image descriptions!

What are they?

An image description is using words to say what's happening in a picture. For example, a photo of a red ball would be described as "a red ball."

Why are they used?

Image descriptions help people who are blind or have low vision, as well as some people who have visual processing issues, to be able to know what an image is, the same way most people would with their eyes.

How do I write one?

I'm not the best person to explain, because my language issues make them difficult for me to do, so I'm using information from other websites (linked at the bottom of the post.)

Think about what's most important to you or jumps out right away when you look at the image you're describing. What is the main focus of it? If you were telling someone about it, what would you say to them?

Don't over complicate it! Use simple, easily understandable language and put the most important parts first and in the most detail. Try to keep it to 125 words or less if possible.

How do I add them to my images?

Tumblr has the ability to add descriptions to images! Click the three dots that appear on an image in a post you're making and select "add alt text." Pictures that have alt text added will have a badge that says ALT that you can click to show the text.

Can I add them to someone else's post?

You can't directly add them to an already posted image without editing the post, but you can reblog and add a description in regular text.

Do I have to do them for every image? What if I can't?

Ideally, every image would be described, but that's not always possible. You might not know how to describe something, or you might not have the energy for it. You can try reaching out to other people for help with it. If it's an image of text, like a interaction banner or a screenshot, you can put it through an image to text converter. If you can't describe it at all, tagging the post as "undescribed" can help people who need image descriptions to avoid it by filtering it out!

(Sources / recommended reading: https://uxdesign.cc/how-to-write-an-image-description-2f30d3bf5546

https://www.accessiblepublishing.ca/a-guide-to-image-description/ )

Very many agere posts use Tumblr's colorful text feature and fonts either from Tumblr or outside it to fit aesthetics. Unfortunately, this creates an accessibility issue for people who use screen readers, as well as many people with visual or processing disabilities who don't use screen readers.

The problems:

Screen readers read out the name of the color of the text each time it changes, which isn't a problem for the most part, BUT gradient text will make it read the color before each individual letter, which makes it basically impossible to understand what the post says.

People who have difficulty seeing, or difficulty with processing visual input, or sensitivity to visual input, may have difficulty with reading some or all colors of text. Colors close to the background color of the post can be a problem for people with low vision, and bright colors or several contrasting colors can cause pain and seizures in people with migraines and photosensitive epilepsy.

Fonts that exist in Tumblrs code (the ones that come up if you select the "Aa" button) can be processed by screen readers in the same way as colors. However, fonts from outside of Tumblr will not be recognized by most programs and may cause them to not read the post, read confusing sounds, or crash entirely. This also applies to many copy pasted aesthetic symbols, some of which will make the program try to swap between languages.

Fonts can also be a problem for other people with vision and processing issues, like dyslexia. They may not be able to read the text.

Solutions:

Simply not using colored text or fonts is the easiest solution.

However, if you would like to use them, adding a warning to the post itself and/or a content warning tag such as "cw colored text" or "cw fonts" and making a separate post that has the same content, but without colors or fonts. The accessible post can be linked at the top of the main one for easy finding by people who need it.