Social media can be extremely engaging. But not everyone can experience that to the fullest.
Among those people who cannot experience social media as it is, include the vision impaired and blind people. Because these people, despite having the lacks, deserve to have an equal share of the web, Twitter is delivering an update that should improve accessibility for those users.
Traditionally, the blind and people with low vision could use screen readers, which can automatically read text and image content as speech or braille output. Screen readers are essential to those people, as well as to those who have a learning disability.
However, when dealing with pictures displayed on Twitter, screen readers can be rendered useless if not incapable.
With an update, Twitter announced the rollout of the ALT badge.
To add ALT image descriptions to an image in a tweet:
- Right after uploading an image to a tweet, users can select eh 'Add description' underneath the image.
- Enter a description of the image in the text box, under the limit of 1000 words.
- Click Save, and an ALT badge will appear at the corner of the image.
- After tweeting, any user who sees the tweet will see an ALT badge with the image. Clicking on it will open the description for the image.
In all, this should improve image description for all users globally.
"As promised, the ALT badge and exposed image descriptions go global today," reads a tweet from Twitter's Accessibility account.
"Over the past month, we fixed bugs and gathered feedback from the limited release group. We're ready. You're ready. Let's describe our images!"
As promised, the ALT badge and exposed image descriptions go global today.
Over the past month, we fixed bugs and gathered feedback from the limited release group. We're ready. You're ready. Let's describe our images! Here's how: https://t.co/bkJmhRpZPg https://t.co/ep1ireBJGt— Twitter Accessibility (@TwitterA11y) April 7, 2022
Twitter first introduced image descriptions in 2016, but it was difficult for most users to use the feature.
It was only until 2020 that Twitter finally put a focus on accessibility.
The long wait is said to be caused by the lack of dedicated team at Twitter for accessibility at the time.
Twitter employees had to volunteer their own time for accessibility works, and this made the long delay.
Since the company fixed that, announcing that it had formed teams to focus on accessibility, the work can be done a lot faster now.
Further reading: Twitter Introduces Automatic Captions, One Year After Introducing Voice Tweets