Image depicts the improvised firearm used to assassinate Shinzo Abe with a small but conspicuous Gudetama keyring hanging from the handle of the gun as an accessory. Gudetama is a Japanese anime mascot that is an egg yolk with a flat, dejected expression and in this keyring it is sitting in the bottom half of a cracked eggshell with small, stubby arms outstretched.

[–] chgxvjh@hexbear.net 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

alt text 🥰

[–] ReadFanon@hexbear.net 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm always a little bit surprised when I find out that someone has read the alt-text that I wrote out.

I give it my best effort regardless but I find myself wondering if I'm doing a good job with it - if I'm capturing the right details in a logical order that makes enough sense to stand on its own and whether I'm doing it with the right amount of depth.

Thanks for the encouragement!

[–] chgxvjh@hexbear.net 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

It's funny that the alt text includes details that are almost impossible to spot in the graphic.

I like writing alt texts because it makes me reflect on what I'm actually trying to convey with an image. It's an interesting choice what to include since there is often more clarity in the text but also images are often used in a referencial manner and I'm never sure how well that comes across.

The Connect app shows alt text when you click on images. Screenshot of the connect app showing the alt text from ReadFanon's earlier comment. But I've also seen Edie dig up alt texts from the HTML.

[–] ReadFanon@hexbear.net 4 points 1 week ago

There are dozens of us

Image depicts a screenshot of this user as they are composing the text part of the reply in the Android app called Connect, which has a distinct visual style that other Connect users will recognize, making the comment itself recursive

[–] ReadFanon@hexbear.net 3 points 1 week ago

But yeah, it definitely does the same for me and I've made a little commitment to myself to try to add extra details into my alt-text to make it like a little reward or Easter egg for the people who do read it so it's not just a sort of afterthought for people with visual impairment but as a way to break down the barrier and the stigma around using accessibility tools (in a very small way) by encouraging everyone to read the alt-text because they might get something out of it that they wouldn't have otherwise gotten. If we often get bonus content that is relevant to the image in the alt-text then we're all going to be more likely to engage with it and hopefully we can inspire others by setting the standard with good examples of visual description.

Not to overstate the importance of my alt-text here but my hope was that it might get noticed as a little experiential thing where you get a sense of what it's like to have a visual impairment and how the alt-text can really enrich your understanding because the blurry keychain becomes much easier to understand when you've got a written description to guide your interpretation of some blurry pixels.

In another life I had to do quite a bit of presentations for my work and it was only when there was a coworker who was legally blind that I started doing visual descriptions of images like graphs or pictures to represent a concept that I realized just how valuable it is to all participants if I take a moment to describe the images and how they relate to what's being presented. It really reinforces the message and drives things home for everyone when you're presenting and it was a really big moment for me to be hit with the curb-cut effect in such a dramatic and almost tangible way like that. I made a commitment to myself to continue this practice for presentations and public speaking after I had that epiphany that this coworker was a catalyst for.