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2024-12-06 15:13:10

alttexthalloffame@mastodon.social

Someone once posted a short study on the quality of alt text of images posted here, not just whether it's present.

Does this ring any bells? Can't seem to find it anymore.

#AltText #ImageDescriptions #accessibility

2024-12-06 16:12:21

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Alt Text Hall of Fame I'm interested in that myself, also in what actually counts as "quality" alt-text from a Mastodon culture point-of-view.

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #MastodonCulture #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta

2024-12-07 02:35:11

Representative Sample

RepresentativeSample@mstdn.party

@alttexthalloffame Is this it? https://stefanbohacek.com/blog/impact-of-fediverse-clients-on-the-use-of-alt-text/

2024-12-07 04:43:32

Alt Text Hall of Fame

alttexthalloffame@mastodon.social

@RepresentativeSample Ah, no, sorry, this one only looks at the presence of alt text. (Also, I wrote it.)

But thank you!

2024-12-07 05:31:25

Representative Sample

RepresentativeSample@mstdn.party

@alttexthalloffame Oh, lol, whoops! I’ll keep looking.

2024-12-07 05:38:18

Alt Text Hall of Fame

alttexthalloffame@mastodon.social

@RepresentativeSample No worries, appreciate your help!

2024-12-07 05:49:56

Representative Sample

RepresentativeSample@mstdn.party

@alttexthalloffame Do you happen to remember anything else about it? (e.g., formal peer-reviewed study vs. less formal personal project? ; anything about methods or findings?) No worries if not.

2024-12-07 13:13:44

Alt Text Hall of Fame

alttexthalloffame@mastodon.social

@RepresentativeSample Ah, sorry, all I remember is that it was just an informal post on here, something along the lines "I manually reviewed 100 (?) images for the quality of their alt text, here's what I noticed".

I could've sworn I had it bookmarked, it's also possible that the post was deleted.

2024-12-07 19:04:36

Representative Sample

RepresentativeSample@mstdn.party

@alttexthalloffame Sorry, I’ve been unable to locate this. Most of my search-fu skills are in the academic database realm, so it’s entirely possible that I’m just not using the right terms to locate it here.

However, I’ve found out some interesting things about alt text as a result of seeing a bunch of posts and articles about it! Makes me want to dig a bit further into it and see if there’s a corpus of research on this in sociology of disability.

2024-12-07 19:17:48

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Representative Sample One interesting aspect of alt-text has to be that, both in technological handling and culture, alt-text is different in social media than in blogs and on static websites, it's different in the Fediverse than in corporate silo social media, and it's probably different on Mastodon than in the rest of the Fediverse. Even on Mastodon, it tends to vary greatly.

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta

2024-12-07 20:14:49

Representative Sample

RepresentativeSample@mstdn.party

@jupiter_rowland Huh! Is there a particular reason for that?

2024-12-07 20:36:57

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Representative Sample I guess there are multiple reasons.

For starters, those who came to Mastodon from the birdcage in 2022 didn't care for anything that already existed, ranging from established Fediverse culture to established alt-text standards. Mastodon developed its own alt-text culture which varies widely.

Besides, if you've got 1,500 characters for alt-text at your disposal, why limit your alt-texts to one or two sentences with 200 characters tops as all alt-text guides for elsewhere than Mastodon tell you?

So Mastodon started whipping up alt-texts so long that professional Web accessibility experts would run about in terror, screaming and flailing their arms like Kermit the Frog. 600 characters, 800 characters and more. For a photo of a bird on a branch in front of a blurry background. And not exactly small parts of Mastodon started loving long and detailed alt-texts.

Mastodon users also put all kinds of explanations into alt-text. Big, big no-no. You don't do that, especially since not everyone can access alt-text. But Mastodon users don't know. They haven't been educated about alt-text by accessibility experts, but by hearsay. And besides, they've got 1,500 characters in alt-text. The post text, in the meantime, usually only offers 500 characters, minus hashtags, minus mentions, minus content warnings, minus the actual post text.

At the same time, the rest of the Fediverse mostly perceives alt-text as another fad, another "Mastodon culture" thing that Mastodon tries to push upon said rest of the Fediverse, even if it already has its own culture. If non-Mastodon Fediverse users describe their images, they usually only write the absolute bare necessities.

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta

2024-12-08 14:46:56

Representative Sample

RepresentativeSample@mstdn.party

@jupiter_rowland That’s interesting! Normally I would assume that technological structures (in this case, character limits on a description) would be fixed when a product is released, and then a culture of use emerges based on that. But it sounds like the existence of different character limits - combined with emergent cultural expectations about what constitutes a “good” or “sufficient” amount of alt text - has allowed a really different culture to emerge in Mastodon. Cool!

2024-12-08 18:19:21

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Representative Sample Well, Mastodon's internal character limits, 500 characters for posts, 1,500 characters for alt-text, are both hard-coded in a file that is being synced by git. It can be changed, but only by modifying what's essentially the source code.

Mastodon's current culture was established in 2022 by people who came in from Twitter in the first migration wave which started in February when Elon Musk announced his intention to take over Twitter. In this migration wave already, so many people came to Mastodon, especially mastodon.social, that it didn't take long for them to only encounter their own likes and hardly come across anyone who had been Mastodon users before 2022. Thus, they created a culture that was completely independent from pre-2022 Mastodon.

Also, not a single one of them knew what the Fediverse really was. For absolutely all of them, the Fediverse was Mastodon and only Mastodon. Vanilla Mastodon with a hard 500-character limit which, in the light of only 280 characters on Twitter, already felt like a lot to them.

They did not know about Misskey with 3,000 hard-coded characters. Or Pleroma and Akkoma with 5,000 configurable characters. Or the various Misskey forks with configurable limits of several thousands of characters. Nor did they know about Friendica, over five years older than Mastodon, or Hubzilla, a Friendica fork that's still almost four years older than Mastodon at its core. These two don't have any arbitrary character limits at all. And especially, they didn't know that all of these were fully, bidirectionally connected to Mastodon and interacting with Mastodon all the time.

In fact, ever since, it has always taken Mastodon newbies quite a while to even learn about Mastodon instances with modified character limits, not to mention Mastodon forks with configurable character limits.

And so it was those recent Twitter-to-Mastodon newbies who defined a whole new culture, based on vanilla Mastodon 3.x, its features and its limitations, but for the entire Fediverse. This culture was set in stone in late October already when the second migration wave started, and Mastodon newcomers who really settled into Mastodon, rather than wanting another Twitter, have been living this culture ever since.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Pleroma #Akkoma #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Friendica #Hubzilla #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta

2024-12-07 20:20:22

Alt Text Hall of Fame

alttexthalloffame@mastodon.social

@RepresentativeSample No worries, really appreciate you looking into this!

And I'm really glad you find this topic interesting! This cause could definitely use another vocal (but respectful) advocate!