Like myself some of you add photos / images to your social media posts with a goal that these images will provide enjoyment, attract or keep the attention of your followers or friends. One thing you may not be aware of if you do not take one extra relatively simple step to make the images you share accessible by adding alternative text some of your followers or friends will not know what the photo or image is. Alternative text provides a textual alternative to non-text content such as photos and images. Without taking the step of adding alternative text to your images people who are blind or visually impaired who use screen readers may feel left out since they will have no idea of what the image is.
Also finding an image without alternative text may cause your followers or friends who use screen readers to pause and wonder what they are missing in the image, thus distracting them from the desired text in the social media post. Sometimes the screen reader user even has to go back and attempt to reread the text understanding that on their second attempt they will need to skip through some images without alternative text while concentrating on the text they can read in-between the inaccessible content. Or even worse, some readers may give up attempting to read the message due to the accessibility issues in the content.
Fortunately, in most cases it only takes a few extra steps to add alternative text descriptions to make your photos and images accessible to people who are blind or visually impaired and use screen readers.
Alternative text descriptions should describe the image in as much detail as possible. However, they should also be concise to reduce the amount of text read by the screen reader. To best determine what alternative text description to use, just close your eyes and think about what you would want somebody to tell you to describe any image you cannot see enabling you to clearly visualize what the image looks like in your mind.
If your publishing software does not allow for adding alternative text directly in your publishing user interface it is possible you can incorporate HTML or ARIA directly in the code your publishing software published. For some suggestions refer to my two HTML examples below and for more details see the resource section.
If you are able to edit and view the HTML code, look for a line that says something similar to the example below:
<img src="filename.gif" alt="filename">
Replace the text in between the quotes after alt="with the alternative text description you want. For example, for the photo below I used “Bill wearing blue jeans, a red, black and gray flannel shirt, blue vest, sunglasses with support cane extended and long cane in pouch clipped to belt standing by lake at Grant Ranch Park with green rolling hills, trees, shrubs and a gray cloudy sky overhead”.
If the image or photo is decorative and adds no meaningful content add “” after alt =“”.
Although the suggestion described above is focused on HTML, these alternative text description concepts can assist for Facebook, Twitter and Yammer as well.
Below are some resources with details to help you add alternative text to images in Yammer, Twitter and Facebook. Also, there are tips to leverage HTML and ARIA if your publishing interface does not allow adding alternative text directly. Lastly, I have additional resources to help you learn more about alternative text and why it is so critical to help increase inclusion and decrease exclusion.
- How to add alternative text to images in Yammer
- How to add alternative text to images in Facebook
- How to add alternative text to images in Twitter
- WebAIM-Alternative Text
- WAI Web Accessibility Tutorials-Images Concepts
- WCAG WG-Using aria-labelledby to provide a text alternative for non-text content
- w3schools-HTML img alt Attribute
On the topic of alternative text descriptions does anyone have any other recommendations to help create a more inclusive environment for people who are unable to see the photos / images shared in social media?
Do any of you have suggestions on how to include everybody equally in our social media posts? Does anyone have tips to help increase inclusion for people with other disabilities besides blindness or low vision?
We all look forward to hearing your valuable comments and suggestions.
Bill Tipton
Contributing Author,
Global Dialogue Center
http://www.globaldialoguecenter.com/
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/wdtipton
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bill.tipton.39
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wdtipton
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