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2026-08-23 06:30:08

Prof. Rachel Thorn 🍉🇺🇦🏳️‍⚧️🏳️ via #alttext

RachelThornSub@famichiki.jp

Henceforth, every time I see a hostile or snarky reaction to a politely worded request to add #AltText, I am reporting it to both my instance admins and the instance of the asshole.

2026-08-23 08:11:37

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Prof. Rachel Thorn 🍉🇺🇦🏳️‍⚧️🏳️ Just out of curiosity: Are there any good excuses for not having added an alt-text that you'd accept?

For example, when someone new to Hubzilla tells you that they neither know what alt-text is nor how to add it? Hubzilla doesn't have dedicated UI elements for adding alt-texts. Images are embedded into posts like in blog posts rather than attached as files like on Mastodon. Alt-texts have to be manually woven into the image-embedding phpBB code, and the newbie might not know that this is explained in Hubzilla's built-in help, or it's simply too tedious to "program" an alt-text in.

Or when a Hubzilla veteran of over ten years tells you that Hubzilla has no way whatsoever to add an alt-text to a video? Like images, videos are embedded into posts. But the video-embedding code has no option for an alt-text. Granted, if it's a video, I'd rather expect or supply a full, time-coded transcript in the message text. But maybe what's expected is both a full, time-coded transcript and an alt-text that's sufficiently detailed by Mastodon's standards.

If neither of these are acceptable to you, there's something else you should know: Hubzilla does not support Mastodon's report feature either because that's a non-standard, homegrown Mastodon feature, and Hubzilla is not built against Mastodon. So if you report someone to their Hubzilla admin, the admin simply will never receive your report.

This is likely to lead Mastodon users into believing that either the server on the other end is unmoderated (which, in Hubzilla's case and by Mastodon's standards, is technically true because Hubzilla is all about self-moderation), or the admin doesn't care, both of which, by Mastodon's standards, is reason enough to have the server Fediblocked.

Again, I'm just being curious and cautious. You should not believe that I'm trying to weasel myself out of having to describe images.

After all, I'm working on an extensive wiki about image descriptions and alt-texts in the Fediverse with 50+ pages with dozens of webpages and blog posts on how to describe images. I'm using the same knowledge that I'm pouring into the wiki, the same rules and guidelines that already have or will have wiki pages, to describe my own images, even though some of them collide with each other and with Mastodon's image description preferences and quality standards. I don't think anyone else in the Fediverse is taking describing images more seriously.

I rarely post images anymore due to the effort involved. But whenever I do, I take all the effort that's needed to both describe and explain them, taking into consideration the context, Mastodon's culture and preferences regarding alt-texts and image descriptions, the potential target audience and what knowledge they may or may not have about what's in the image. I've declared all my existing image descriptions outdated, also because it'd be too tedious to go and upgrade them all whenever I learn something new about describing images. (Don't go looking for my most recent images on this channel; I post my images elsewhere now because Hubzilla can't make Mastodon blur sensitive images.)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #Hubzilla #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

2026-08-23 18:05:26

Stefan Bohacek

stefan@stefanbohacek.online

@RachelThornSub I think it's fine to report people who are hostile, I'd very much encourage that.

But the low alt text usage is a cultural problem, that's already very prevalent on he

Alt Text Health Check wrote the following Beitrag Sun, 16 Aug 2026 14:15:08 +0200

mastodon.green - 95% mastodon.nz - 93% mathstodon.xyz - 93% beige.party - 92% wandering.shop - 91% mastodon.scot - 87% tech.lgbt - 85% mastodon.ie - 82% mastodon.art - 81% aus.social - 79% chaos.social - 78% swiss.social - 77% mementomori.social - 75% <br />hachyderm.io - 72% troet.cafe - 71% piaille.fr - 69% meow.social - 67% norden.social - 67% ohai.social - 67% mamot.fr - 67% mstdn.plus - 64% mastodon.ml - 63% mastodon.gamedev.place - 60% mastodon.online - 59% social.tchncs.de - 58% famichiki.jp - 58% <br />todon.eu - 58% mstdn.ca - 56% nrw.social - 55% c.im - 55% fosstodon.org - 51% mas.to - 50% mastodon.uno - 45% mastodonapp.uk - 44% kolektiva.social - 43% techhub.social - 43% sfba.social - 41% universeodon.com - 40% infosec.exchange - 35% masto.es - 33% <br />social.lol - 30% fedibird.com - 29% mastodont.cat - 29% mastodon.social - 27% masto.ai - 25% mastodon.nl - 24% mastodon.world - 23% mastodonsweden.se - 19% g0v.social - 18% o3o.ca - 9%

Results from tracking 15,979 images across 990 instances from the mstdn.social federated timeline.

Then filtering down to the top 1000 instances by active user from instances.social who had posted at least 24 images (1.5x the average).

And as a cultural problem, I'm not sure it will be fixed by addressing one individual at a time.