-

2025-04-18 02:43:36

PixysJourney@beige.party

After sharing a Toot about alt text usage, I got curious. This is nothing too serious though, nothing to have heated discussions over, just me being curious after isn't comments that I've read...

I know that enjoyment of alt text can also depend on the quality of the alt text! And some folks use meager alt texts, where it may just say "black cat", while others are good at describing images and will include many beautiful details. Others may want to use them but struggle with writing them, so they may use altbot or the alt4me hashtag...

It would be nice to get a good idea about how much alt texts are appreciated. Boots are welcome

of course.

I know some people are against the use of ai/bot for the creation of alt texts... That's not the question here. I don't mind a respectful chat about it with people that want to share. But please! Keep it kind and respectful. People that use the bot/AI, like I do, do try to write inclusive image toots that are accessible to all. Not adding any alt text would be the "lazy" option (I've been called bad names and lazy for having altbot help me with the texts).

Thanks for voting and sharing!

#AltText

I enjoy alt text and I'm sighted

556 Stimmen | 87%

I enjoy alt text and I am vision impaired

17 Stimmen | 3%

I don't look at alt text and I'm sighted

68 Stimmen | 11%

I don't check alt texts and I'm vision impaired

0 Stimmen | 0%

641 Stimmen insgesamt
Umfrage ist beendet

2025-04-18 02:43:37

tl;dr

tldr@fuzzies.wtf

@PixysJourney TL;DR: OP is curious how much people appreciate alt text and wants to gauge its usage and creation methods (including AI assistance) without starting a debate.

2025-04-18 02:48:05

Nick's world 🌎 👨‍🦯 🗽

gocu54@caneandable.social

@adhdeanasl @PixysJourney Personally, I like detailed descriptions, but that's because I like words.

2025-04-18 02:48:16

Just Bob ♒🇺🇲🪖🐧

bob@beamship.mpaq.org

@PixysJourney

I just suck at writing them but I will never intentionally use an AI for anything including but not limited to.... Well, never mind, I'll be nice ?

2025-04-18 03:07:41

Kevin Davy

pathfinder@beige.party

@PixysJourney
Sometimes it's only the alt text that allows me to realise what I'm supposed to be seeing. Also, I love it when people use it to reference the source of an image, like the scene from a film. Because it stops me spending ages trying to remember where it comes from.

2025-04-18 03:30:45

:neuro: Pixy's Journey :v_bi:

PixysJourney@beige.party

I'm muting the toot/poll for a bit, as it's awesome that so many people interact, but it's making my phone go buzz loads. ? Thanks for voting, sharing, and commenting!

2025-04-18 03:35:26

si_irini

si_irini@mastodon.social

@PixysJourney

I don't use help for my AltTexts, but maybe I should, I've already thought about it
My descriptions are not so good and I think it's good when pictures are well described

2025-04-18 03:47:01

Bruce Toews

Bruce@allovertheplace.ca

@gocu54 What I'd like to see is an apped that just beeped at you when you passed a link with an attachment, giving you the choice of interacting with it or moving on and ignoring it. But the more image descriptions I read, the less I tend to want to read image descriptions. This is just me, and I'm not knocking image descriptions in any way.

2025-04-18 04:24:07

Jessica the VI Artist🎚️🎹🌈

JessicatheVIArtist@kind.social

@PixysJourney @BorrisInABox I think you’re asking what types of details in alt text we prefer to read? To me it depends on the kind of image in what mood I am in. I like basic info to know what something is but often I am entertained by more details. Especially about flowers and cats and birds and sound things.

2025-04-18 04:53:01

Angua :neodog_flag_disabled:

AnguaDelphine@mk.absturztau.be

@PixysJourney@beige.party

Sighted, but I often rely on AltText.

A lot of pictures are obscure or from overseas so I miss so much, or just don't recognise people, places, things as they're just not local to me.

If the text can conjure a picture I think that's the ideal.

2025-04-18 06:16:46

James Scholes

jscholes@dragonscave.space

@PixysJourney I'm blind so I rely on alt text, but I wouldn't say I enjoy it.

I appreciate everyone who writes it, and there are examples out there I can appreciate for their level of detail, word choice, and other aspects. But even the best alt text usually leaves me feeling like it is a genuinely lesser substitute to seeing the image itself.

Which is interesting, because I adore audio description on videos and barely think about its presence. It feels much more "right".

2025-04-18 07:33:14

Alan "AJ"

alanajwrites@mastodon.social

@PixysJourney I always add alt text to the pictures in stories I publish on Medium & Substack. But I’m often unsure how much detail to include. I’m torn between giving a full representation vs. possibly annoying the reader by having them wade through something over-the-top.

2025-04-18 07:48:37

lizzzzard

lizzard@social.tchncs.de

@PixysJourney I'm sighted.

I especially like alt text that points at what it is the author finds important in that picture. It helps me get the intention beyond the mere content of the image. And sometimes helps getting it at all, like for crafts that I don't know.

And then there's the completely separate genre of alt-text art: where the description hides a joke, twist or in other ways adds to the toot itself. I love those. I'm curious how sight-impaired people think about those, though.

2025-04-18 08:23:53

Mlékař Dan ?

mlekar@witter.cz

@PixysJourney I am not very wordy and English is my second language and writing a good alt text to my own photos is hard - should I describe strictly the subject, or the intended emotion? And what it is, do people seeing it feel it too? And then usually the imposter feelings hit.
Hitting the ai button solves that, but I really hate what it comes up with.

2025-04-18 08:34:43

The Eddie Show 🎄📷🎧❤️

TheEddieShow@beige.party

@PixysJourney

I've begun to use AI to supply a basic alt text that I edit. I struggle otherwise with basic descriptions of things I once could name easily, but can no longer. Saves me a lot of stress and embarrassment.

2025-04-18 09:05:30

Sara Joy :happy_pepper:

sarajw@front-end.social

@PixysJourney I was about to vote, I enjoy alt text and I'm sighted - because I do and I am - but this may end up being a poll that just confirms there are a lot more sighted than blind people, unfortunately.

I suspect most of us find a bit of alt text useful, sometimes it confirms or give extra info on something in the picture :)

2025-04-18 09:24:10

Nic Dafis

nic@toot.wales

@PixysJourney I’m sighted, but I’ll always check the alt text if I’m inclined to share a post (to make sure it’s at least minimally useful), and I’ll often end up noticing things that I’d missed in the image. Some people write beautiful descriptions here, I’ll read those even if I’m not boosting, as a little treat.

2025-04-18 09:42:04

Morten Grøftehauge

drgroftehauge@sigmoid.social

@PixysJourney I remember vision impaired people complaining about posts with the same emoji repeated over and over, like in jokes about red flags in dating. Because the screen reader is dumb and reads each of them instead of saying "seventeen emoji red flags". So I try to keep alt text short and to the point. I want to convey how the image supports the post, quickly, whether the reader has a pop culture or vision impairment.
#AltText

2025-04-18 10:35:35

DoryTheFish🌌

DoryTheFish@beige.party

@PixysJourney

I often use alt text to find out what the photographer wants to attract my attention to.

I have a hard time writing them. I do, now, with the help of a bot, but when I was writing them myself, I would just describe enough for context and message like "angry looking cat" or "tired beige dog wrapped in a blanket " leaving out the description of the background and the mood of the photo unless these things were actual part of the message that I was trying to convey with the picture.

2025-04-18 11:53:12

CartyBoston

CartyBoston@mastodon.roundpond.net

@PixysJourney Some alt text is over the top, that's super that folks have found another way to express themselves but it's not reasonable or appropriate to expect that of others.

2025-04-18 11:57:39

Andre Louis

FreakyFwoof@universeodon.com

@PixysJourney I filled out the poll but also did a similar one some time ago myself. Linking for potential interest sake. I'm visually impaired and benefit from alt-text, by the way. https://universeodon.com/@FreakyFwoof/111373621176603928

2025-04-18 12:34:28

Sabrina Web :privacypride: 📎

sabrinaweb71@sociale.network

@PixysJourney I appreciate alt text because I'm sighted but usually miss the meaning of an image.
I hate, really hate, when the alt text isn't helpful at all (such as "image/gif", or copying the post, or just putting a series of hashtags. I'd rather have a picture without an alt text than this.
A bot is better than nothing, of course, but sometimes it fails to recognize the people in the photo or resumes the text rather than just copying it, and I think that the toot loses meaning this way

2025-04-18 12:46:30

Just Another Amy

justanotheramy@aus.social

@PixysJourney
I worry a lot about over-describing and being tedious, so I’ll try to follow up other replies to this poll for more insight.

2025-04-18 12:47:32

J. J. Zepfanman @disc...

zepfanman@discuss.systems

@PixysJourney As a sighted person, sometimes alt text is helpful to know what the author is wanting us to focus on in the image.

2025-04-18 13:29:31

mirabilos

mirabilos@toot.mirbsd.org

@PixysJourney I do enjoy the alt text, especially if an image needs cultural background that I don’t have to understand.

But no alt text at all is still 10000x better than machine-produced "alt" "text". Not only do I have no tolerance for these world-burning eso-fascist theft machines, but they are also nowhere even near accurate enough; cf. https://mastodon.social/@SteveFaulkner/114217712724605423.

2025-04-18 13:49:23

Uwe Trenkner

utrenkner@mastodon.green

@PixysJourney
I am sighted but frequently read Alt-Text to (better) understand images. E.g. because they are memes I don’t understand as they use screenshots from TV series I don’t know.

And sometimes I just enjoy the details someone describes to convey the content of an image. Some of the most amazing have been descriptions of erotic images (scene, mood,…)

2025-04-18 14:09:03

Max Leibman

maxleibman@beige.party

@PixysJourney @adhdeanasl I’m borderline but out sighted/don’t use. I will sometimes reference alt text if I’m not sure who or what an image is of and/or what its purpose in the post is, but that’s a pretty small percentage of the time.

I do always include it when I post images.

2025-04-18 15:01:05

smitty@dice.camp

@PixysJourney I’m a sighted user, but I sometimes find alt text helpful for validating that I actually understand what someone is trying to convey with an image.

Also I’ve been dealing with accessibility compliance on my employer’s site long enough that adding it is kind of reflexive for me. I write it myself; I personally prefer the hashtags that ask someone else to write it over AI, but AI alt text is better than no alt text.

2025-04-18 15:52:18

Acin ☆

shadowfals@toot.cat

alt text meta, long response

Artikel ansehen

2025-04-18 17:02:53

DirtWood

BetaCuck4Lyfe@kolektiva.social

@PixysJourney for me, a sighted person, alt text is a window into what made a person care to share an image. What are the things that matter to the poster about this? Why might some of those things be surprising to me? It is another way to know the minds of my biggest family, and that's cool

2025-04-18 17:59:46

Dataline

somebody@tech.lgbt

@PixysJourney Every blind person I know really, really appreciates when (a) alt text interfaces are themselves good and generally accessible and (b) people take the time to use them (it helps them participate in every way). It *also* helps people who for any reason can only use a text-based interface. It provides a layer of redundancy which is generally preferable in every context.

My take on generated alt texts: I frequently use OCR to generate alt texts for images that are heavy on text, and then go through and manually edit out noise and mistakes. I don't think its a good idea to fire-and-forget with AI on anything, and I have some long-winded arguments as to why that's bad for us.

In a nutshell: yes, please write alt text. It's good. Something is always better than nothing. Parity is better than no parity. No, please don't make extreme policies regarding alt text. I don't have the energy to follow a 30 point code of conduct when I get off work. One must sometimes unbutton the uniform to stay sane.

2025-04-18 18:56:46

David John Crook

DavidjCrook@mastodon.world

@PixysJourney Sometimes our Internet strength is poor, and pictures do not appear immediately, so alt text is really helpful.

2025-04-18 19:16:30

Chris Mills

ambientspace@cloudisland.nz

@PixysJourney I enjoy adding extra content to #AltText - and I do not allow AI to mess things up.

2025-04-18 21:48:57

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Chris Mills @:neuro: Pixy's Journey :v_bi: Kind of similar here, only that the extra information always goes into the post text itself. That extra information is necessary because I only ever post about extremely obscure topics, and I want people to understand my image posts without having to look anything up themselves.

Whenever I post a wholly original image, I even add two image descriptions, a "short" and purely visual one in the alt-text and an extensive one that includes explanations in the post itself.

And yes, I write my image descriptions myself by hand. I'm on a desktop computer with a hardware keyboard most of the time. Besides, AI can't nearly do what I do.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

2025-04-18 19:23:31

Cycling on Rails

cycling_on_rails@mastodon.social

@PixysJourney I'm sighted and enjoy alt text, especially when Internet is slow and images take a long time to load (but text of the toot loads all good), for example when travelling by train through areas with poor Internet coverage.

2025-04-18 20:25:57

mborus

mborus@mastodon.social

@PixysJourney While I try to add alt-texts to all images, because it’s the right thing to do, my client doesn’t show them by default and the [ALT] tag sometimes covers important text (mostly web comic captions), so I picked „I don’t enjoy them“

2025-04-18 20:35:30

Olivia A-C

LivInTheLookingGlass@transfem.social

@PixysJourney@beige.party I'm sighted. When it's needed, it's really useful. When it's not, it detracts nothing

2025-04-18 20:39:41

Luissen

Luissen@furry.engineer

@PixysJourney as a sighted person, alt text is important to me because it drives intent for what elements the poster deemed important

2025-04-18 21:39:03

Lkdc

Lkdc@dmv.community

@PixysJourney I consider myself sighted (although I do have some vision impairment), but I'm completely dependent on alt text because my phone plan won't allow me to load more than a few pictures per month. I often wonder how many other people with low-data plans would use Mastodon if they knew that it's possible to turn off pictures and read alt text instead. Globally, there must be many, many people with low-data plans.

I get frustrated with AI-generated alt text, which is amazing but often gets important details wrong. I wish that all AI-generated alt text would be reviewed by a human before being posted.

2025-04-19 03:57:32

:neuro: Pixy's Journey :v_bi:

PixysJourney@beige.party

I have tried to answer all the replies that I saw (so far) to this Toot.
Thanks everyone for voting, for sharing, for caring!
I've never had a Toot this popular and it really overwhelmed me! I am grateful but when I saw all the reactions, it did scare the bejeezus out of me for a while!

Thanks to all that have participated so far! I'm trying to write a blog about what I've been learning from the results and the experiences that all of you shared.

Maybe the choice of words of "enjoying" alt texts wasn't the best. Maybe I should have worded it differently. My mother's language is not English, and sometimes I struggle finding the right words to express what I mean (which also happens in my own language ? it's a "me" thing).

thanks again!!