The difference between including me or leaving me in the dark is just a few seconds of your time…

Exclusive | 5 min read | Uruguay | Supporting new talent | Inclusive journalism  

My phone trills with an alert about my friend’s latest TikTok video. I open it and find a mash-up of short song clips. They hold a certain meaning, I’m sure, but I can't grasp what that is. 

I’ve been blind since birth and rely on my screen reader to ‘see’ online content for me. This wonderful assistive technology turns text and images into speech or Braille for the visually impaired. 

But it can’t read subtitles on videos or interpret images unless the alternative or ‘alt’ text (a short visual description) has been filled in by the person who uploaded it. 

My friend hadn’t done that on his TikTok video, so I tried to figure it out for myself. His hashtags give me a flavour - something about surviving lockdown. The comments are mostly variants of lol, ha ha or repeated cry-laughing emojis, but tell me no more about the video except others have been able to easily interpret the humour.

When I ask him, it takes less than a minute to describe what the video is about – he’s doing lockdown tasks like cooking, spending time in the garden or with his cat, along with some funny comments on the screen. 

It took just a couple of sentences and 20 seconds for my friend to explain the visuals for me. That’s all it takes to include meaningful alt text when you upload pictures and videos online.

How I wish people on social media and websites did this more. 

I don’t feel bitter about the fact my birth at just 25 weeks snatched my sight due to retinopathy of prematurity - a risk of my early birth. I feel lucky to be here and live in a digital age where technological advances open more doors for the visually impaired than ever before.

But for people like me, tech has also created a problem of its own.

Inaccessible content

Millions of users upload content across social media every day. For my sighted friends, memes, hilarious pictures and viral videos are part of their everyday conversations. I cannot see these things, but I still want to be part of the dialogue.

The majority of digital content is inaccessible and it makes me feel left behind. On the outside out of the joke. Shut off from the conversation.

Memes, for example, are often topical and the perfect way to share both your opinions and sense of humour. But the majority don’t carry any alt text.

Inspirational quotes on beautiful backgrounds are also impossible for my screen reader to interpret. The same goes for posters, graphics and screenshots. 

This issue goes beyond Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The same problem occurs with images found on all sorts of websites, digital news and magazine outlets. When pictures are not described, I am left with blanks where information should be.

Luckily for me, I've always been good at speaking up and don’t think twice about asking a sighted friend or family member for a visual description. But sometimes I find so much inaccessible content that asking for descriptions of each element makes me feel awkward, even ashamed - albeit unfairly. 

Not being able to access visual content can also have much more serious consequences than feeling left out of a conversation. 

During the current pandemic, most of the infographics used by media outlets to chart daily infection and death rates from Covid-19 have been inaccessible. The caption might read, ‘Infection rates over the last 24 hours,’ but the alt text is blank so I don’t know how the rates are trending. Up? Down? Slowing? Accelerating?

Posters with step-by-step instructions on how to properly wash your hands rarely carry alt text either. I’m 18 and live with my parents so I can ask them what I need to do to protect my health. But many visually impaired people live independently and are simply missing out on vital health information carried in digital graphics.

Missing information sometimes has nothing to do with my health, and everything to do with stopping me completing a basic task.

A few days ago I searched for a company that could deliver chocolate to my home but all the information about the bundles available, postage costs and delivery timeframes were in pictures, with - you guessed it - no alt text.

I emailed the owner to ask for the information I needed, and they didn’t bother to reply. This is sadly an all-too-common experience.

Though I live in Uruguay, it’s good to know that, in some countries (like the UK), businesses are required by law to be accessible, whether running online or face-to-face. But if we’re honest, how many businesses actually cater for the visually impaired?

Solutions that go a long way

The good news is that as much as I find an abundance of inaccessible digital content every day, more people than ever are taking steps to make theirs accessible to everyone.

For me, there are few more beautiful sensations than finding images in an article with alt text filled in. When I came across this very platform it was amazing to find full and rich image descriptions on every picture on every page. From case studies to stock images, and even the backgrounds used in the section headers.

Picture captions were static, not drop down or only visible on expansion, so my screen reader found and read every single one for me.

My experience on the site was so satisfying, in fact, that I was compelled to message the founder of Lacuna Voices on Twitter in the middle of the night to let her know how wonderfully accessible the site was. It led to a great dialogue between us and a commission to write this piece.

Finding alt text on social media is even cooler, enabling me to participate and enjoy online conversations on equal footing with sighted people. It also shows that accessibility issues are being taken into account, and more importantly, solved by individuals and companies alike who are taking the time and initiative to do so.

How you can help

As a sighted content uploader, you can be part of the solution. It’s actually very straightforward. Recent technological advances mean a great many platforms, including most social media, include alt text fields for every user. Describing images is therefore easy to implement, taking a matter of seconds.

If you don’t want to faff around with alt text, you can simply write a caption with ‘Visual Description’ at the start. Sighted people will understand the significance immediately and visually impaired people will thoroughly appreciate it.

Whether you use a caption or alt text, these details allow me to form a mental picture of what is being described. Even though I have no imagery in my mind’s eye either, I still benefit from the visual context.

The amount of detail needed depends on how important the image is for the message you want to communicate alongside it.

Take memes for example. It’s usually enough to include just the key details that make it fun and any relevant text. However, details such as the landscape and more commonly the characteristics of the people involved can be important too.

For example: ‘Little girl with pigtails shrugging her shoulders and holding up her hands with her mouth open in shock, with text that reads: my reaction when the doctor asks how many drinks I’ve had this week.’

Quotes or texts over images cannot be interpreted by the screen reader, so it’s a good idea to describe them in your alt text: e.g. photo of cherry blossoms in bloom against a blue sky, with the text: ‘A flower does not think of competing with the flower next to it. It just blooms’.

For information posters, it’s enough to rewrite the key message in the alt text because that’s the important bit: e.g. Stay at home. Protect the NHS. Save Lives.

With screenshots, which are visually more complex, a little more explanation is never bad. Do include information about which app is being used e.g. a news article about the police warning readers of Covid-19 text scams includes a screenshot of a fraudulent iMessage.

Funny content

Making funny videos like my friend’s TikTok accessible is not always such a straightforward task. People like me with visual impairments understand that sometimes you really just have to able to see the video to enjoy the humour fully. But an accessible description will make me feel included, able to participate in discussions and be an active consumer of the digital world.

Here’s an example of a good alt text for a funny video: YouTube video compilation of dogs and owners completing the Kulikitaka challenge. Owners film their dog’s front legs poking out from behind a doorway and dancing in time to vibrant South American music. The owner is hidden, making it appear the dog is on his hind legs, jiggling with increasing speed to the song.

It may not be the same as watching the video itself, but it goes a long way to make this content - and the comments and dialogue below it – accessible.

small changes bring big results

People with visual impairments all have our own preferences as to what we want from alt text or visual descriptions so you’re not going to please everyone. Just know the extra 20 seconds it will take you to add a description to that social media post or your website/blog can mean the world to the person on the other side of the screen. Someone like me.

Being blind in a digital age is as beautiful as it is difficult. It's beautiful, because all the content I can access today allows me to do things that would have been unthinkable not so long ago. It's difficult because I often hit informational dead ends due to inaccessible content, thus widening an accessibility gap that shouldn't be there. 

By applying and sharing the advice I mention here, I hope sighted people will keep people with visual impairments in mind when sharing or publishing content online. Working together, we can begin to close this void and create a more inclusive world.

• You can find social media guides on adding alt text for Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, plus general guidance on making your web content more accessible for people with visual impairments here.

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