Alt Text Tips From A Visually Impaired Person

If you’ve ever struggled with writing alt text for images, especially for photos that seem difficult to describe, here are six excellent tips from a visually impaired person, posted to Mastodon by @hello@makary.online:

1. Tell me about the colours, because of all the people who need an alt text, some of us see a little bit, or we used to, so we know what colours are. Even those of us who were born blind, we know intellectually what green is and that it’s the colour of grass, and leaves, and people usually bring it up in the context of life, and hope, and so on. Just because you haven’t seen an atom doesn’t mean that the concept is unthinkable for you, right?

2. I know what shapes and textures are, if you tell me that something is smooth, I know what smooth is, if you tell me that something is made of cloth, I know how that feels, if you tell me it has sharp edges, I know how sharp edges feel and how they are different from soft, rounded corners.

3. Give me the context. If it is a character from a book or a series, tell me their name and the title, maybe I know them! I listen to audiobooks and series all the time! If it’s a comic and the people interacting are a couple, it is important, and means something else than if they are siblings, or a parent with a child, or an owner and their dog. If someone on the photo makes an awkward or unhappy face, or grins like crazy, that’s information that helps me get it.

4. Give me vibes. Describe it to me the way you see it. If you think the drawing of a doll is creepy, say ‘it seems creepy to me’. If the picture of a sunrise makes you feel at peace, tell me ‘It looks really peaceful to me’. Tell me how it makes you feel, be evocative, because that’s what experiencing stuff is, you know, experiencing. If you don’t feel sure about it, also tell me. ‘It feels off and eerie for some reason, but I can’t put my finger on it’ is a very interesting description.

5. Be a person. AI image descriptions not only sometimes get stuff wrong, but also miss all the context. A robot will not know which part of the picture is important. I am not a robot, neither are you. Just think about ‘how would I describe it to a friend who cannot see it for whatever reason’ and do that. You are not my external eyes, because that’s not possible, you are a person describing stuff to me.

6. Do as much or as little as you can. You don’t have to write an essay about every meme. Write as much or as little as you can, have time and feel comfortable with. If you give a short or a bad description, I can see that, and that’s what happens in life lol. But if you don’t put ANY description. the whole thing that you thought was important enough for you to share, doesn’t exist at all for me and people like me, and that’s just low-key sad.