Posting sensitive images if you can't make Mastodon blank them out? CW: long (almost 3,000 characters), Fediverse meta, non-Mastodon Fediverse meta, sensitive media meta, eye contact mentioned, alt-text meta, image description meta
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Could there possibly any way for me to post images containing sensitive content, including eye contact, in a way that's fully inclusive for
- blind or visually-impaired users
- neurodiverse users who need detailed image descriptions
- autistic users who are easily triggered by eye contact
- other traumatised users who need certain content safely hidden from them?
I can't do it the usual way by embedding the image in the post, including a short, visual description in the alt-text and a full, detailed description with explanations and transcripts in the post itself. That's simply because I can't make Mastodon blank the image out, and unlike Hubzilla, Mastodon doesn't hide images behind summaries/content warnings. So that's out of question.
One option would be to make use of my virtual worlds privacy group (for Mastodon users: Privacy groups are lists on steroids and tons of coke) and send the posts only to those of my contacts who are into virtual worlds. This would prevent any leaking of my posts into public timelines/streams and to users who aren't in the privacy group because these posts couldn't even be boosted.
That way, I wouldn't have to take any accessibility measures because I know that what few people would ever receive my posts don't need any of them. But it'd be like cheating. Also, it'd greatly reduce the visibility of my posts.
Another option would be to link to the image pages on my channel like
this one rather than to embed the images in the post.
Not only couldn't even Mastodon keep me from posting more than four images at once, but I know for certain that Mastodon doesn't generate preview images of Hubzilla image pages, so the images would stay unseen until someone clicks an image link. I could simply warn about sensitive content in an image right above the link. It's the only surefire way for me to hide a sensitive image from a general audience everywhere in the Fediverse.
This would have two disadvantages itself, though. For one, I can't add alt-text to an image as it's shown on its image page on Hubzilla, for example. The best I could do would be to add an image description as a comment below the image, and I would have to do that, also because that image page is still part of Hubzilla, thus part of the Fediverse, thus, the rules of the Fediverse apply.
Besides, for those on dedicated mobile apps, the image page would not appear in the mobile app. It would cause the default Web browser on their devices to open, and then the browser would show it. That'd be quite inconvenient, also because the context, the image and the image description wouldn't all be in one place.
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