The contorted excuses people concoct to excuse not adding #altText boggle my mind.
Case in point: even if alt text is "now primarily used to train AI" [citation desperately needed], as I've just seen claimed, there are still real-world humans who benefit from it, just as there have been since the web emerged.
If AI tech is now being trained on alt text, it's also now being trained on all the rest of your whatever.
By only concerning yourself with the alt text, you're routing all the AI-related harm to screen reader users, actual humans who already experience massive social & technical marginalization.
It's much simpler to just start adding "cute cat" to your cute cat photos than it is to invent new excuses for behaviors that ultimately just harm screen reader users.
I know there are some fediverse apps with features that make adding alt text easier, some using image detection, etc. Can anyone point me to any write-ups on these?
The creator of alt-text.org is looking for someone to take over the projects. Please reach out to her if you'd like to help and/or have an interest in accessible software.
Been home bound by garden chores but decided to go for a walk yesterday. I went to try something I've wanted to try for a while: catch some purple martins in flight at a martin condo up the street. While martins can turn on a dime their flight patterns back to the condo are similar. All it takes is patience & some luck.
They seemed fine w/ me there so next time I'll try to get closer. More pics to follow.
(05/06/24)
This is wild hyacinth or Camassia scilloides (according to the vender). It's an eastern US native. Planted it last fall & was excited to see it this spring. Must've assumed it was the size of a typical garden hyacinth cause I wasn't expecting it to get so large in the 1st yr. Love the subtle purplish grey petals combined w/ the bright yellow anthers. Going to have to grab more of these 👍.
(05/05/24)
Folks, please read the #AltText before boosting. If it sucks, let's not pass it along.
(Subtoot after seeing a 5-panel comic that only OCRed the last panel and wasn't proofread, then another where the alt text was a generic image description like "a group of people" without context or the image text.)
Not trying to call out anyone in particular, I see a lot of people doing this, but I'm really curious and would like to understand this better.
Folks who use vague alt text with your images ("a funny book cover", "photo of me outside"), what is your thought process? Is the image description intended for sighted people? Or maybe your admin made alt text mandatory? Or maybe that really does seem sufficient.
Been so busy w/ my garden that I haven't had much time to take pics. When I'm that busy I often go back through my catalog & re-edit old pics or edit old pics I never used.
This pic is from 2023. That year there were hundreds of bald eagles along my stretch of the Iowa River. I never edited this photo because the angle was "strange" (I was nearly directly below) & I had tons of eagle photos to choose from.
(02/20/23)
A common and seemingly reasonable argument for white pride or white nationalism is "why can't I be proud of my culture?"
Well, you can. Always have been able to. We have Irish pride celebrations, we have German drinking festivals, we have Serbian food festivals. Any European culture you can think of has multiple organizations in North America dedicated to taking pride in their heritage and NO ONE gives them shit for it.
We are still underestimating the historical gravity--the dark awesomeness--of the last answer #HopeHicks gave under direct examination.
She revealed, in essence, that #Trump admitted to her that he would have lost in 2016 had he not committed 34 felonies.
Sit a moment with that."
A court drawing of the judge, a blond woman, an #TFG w/ notes saying, "I'm automatically attracted...