{"id":52384,"date":"2025-08-26T07:42:37","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T14:42:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=52384"},"modified":"2025-08-30T14:46:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T21:46:15","slug":"alt-text-tips-from-a-visually-impaired-person","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2025\/08\/26\/alt-text-tips-from-a-visually-impaired-person\/","title":{"rendered":"Alt Text Tips From A Visually Impaired Person"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:386,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/tenforward.social\\\/@hello@makary.online\\\/115088543044364833&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/tenforward.social\\\/redirect\\\/statuses\\\/115088543044364833&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>If you&#8217;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, <a href=\"https:\/\/tenforward.social\/@hello@makary.online\/115088543044364833\">posted to Mastodon by @hello@makary.online<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>\n<p><b>Tell me about the colours<\/b>, because of all the people who need an alt text, some of us see <em>a little bit<\/em>, or we used to, so we know what colours are. Even those of us who were born blind, we know intellectually <em>what green is<\/em> and that it&#8217;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&#8217;t seen an atom doesn&#8217;t mean that the concept is unthinkable for you, right?<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><b>I know what shapes and textures are<\/b>, 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.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><b>Give me the context.<\/b> 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&#8217;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&#8217;s information that helps me get it.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><b>Give me vibes.<\/b> Describe it to me the way you see it. If you think the drawing of a doll is creepy, say &#8216;it seems creepy to me&#8217;. If the picture of a sunrise makes you feel at peace, tell me &#8216;It looks really peaceful to me&#8217;. Tell me how it makes you feel, be evocative, because that&#8217;s what experiencing stuff is, you know, experiencing. If you don&#8217;t feel sure about it, also tell me. &#8216;It feels off and eerie for some reason, but I can&#8217;t put my finger on it&#8217; is a very interesting description.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><b>Be a person.<\/b> 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 <em>important<\/em>. I am not a robot, neither are you. Just think about &#8216;how would I describe it to a friend who cannot see it for whatever reason&#8217; and do that. You are not my external eyes, because that&#8217;s not possible, you are a person describing stuff to me.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><b>Do as much or as little as you can.<\/b> You don&#8217;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&#8217;s what happens in life lol. But if you don&#8217;t put ANY description. the whole thing that you thought was important enough for you to share, doesn&#8217;t exist at all for me and people like me, and that&#8217;s just low-key sad.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2038],"tags":[5711,4179,6901],"class_list":["post-52384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","tag-a11y","tag-accessibility","tag-alt-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52384"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52385,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52384\/revisions\/52385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}