Why I won't add image descriptions to all my images from before Nov/Dec 2022; CW: long (over 3,000 characters)
Looks like some #
Fediverse users actually go back and add missing #
AltText and #
ImageDescriptions to every last image they've ever posted. While it may make sense with #
accessibility in mind, I don't know how big their backlog is.
I've started writing alt-text in November or December 2022, and it got gradually more descriptive and informative. But I won't go back and write an image description for each post with at least one image in it.
That's mostly because I'd write them in my current style, chances are they'd get
massive. So massive, in fact, that the reason why they'll end up in the post text itself rather than the alt-text is not so much because some users can't access alt-text, but because they'll be too long for alt-text. They'd surpass the 1,500 characters at which some Fediverse projects would cut them off. They'd surpass the roughly 2,700 or 2,800 characters that mouseover gives me here on #
Hubzilla where I could theoretically post alt-text with way beyond 50,000 characters. They wouldn't work too well in screen readers either, if at all. So the posts would look drastically different afterwards.
This would also mean that my image descriptions after my 2022 Halloween party post would show a sharp decrease in quality and detail. This, in turn, would mean that I would have to redo all my image descriptions from then up until June or so.
Depending on what's in an image, unless it's a meme, I usually need more than half an hour for one #
ImageDescription, not only writing, but also researching in-world what's actually in the image and transcribing text that's illegible in the image itself. That is, even half an hour is only possible if I also create the image in a way that minimises the need for description, explanation and text transcription.
My record is well beyond five hours for an image from July last year. The outcome was an image description of over 13,200 characters. I can't even edit the original post with this image in it because I need it to show what this post looks like
without such a massive image description in it.
Call me ableist, but I won't spend several
days getting all my posts up to that standard.
Oh, and while I'm at it, I should also give all of my posts an appropriate #
ContentWarning. Which, by the way, is called "summary" here on Hubzilla and has been called that long before #
Mastodon even existed.
I won't do that either because it's useless. I rarely post any text that could trigger someone. If there's sensitive material in my posts, it's the images. And there's absolutely no way for me here on Hubzilla to make it so that my images are blurred, much less hidden, on Mastodon. I can make Hubzilla or #
Streams users click two or three times before they see the images at all and once more for each image to unblur it. None of this translates to Mastodon where all my images will always remain in full plain sight, no matter what, until
this Mastodon issue has been fixed.
#
A11y #
CW #
CWs #
ContentWarnings
