web accessibility

Don’t Do it for Me: 5 Great Benefits of Describing Your Photos

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As a long-time supporter of inclusive online spaces, I’ve got plenty of practice asking, begging, pleading, wheedling, entreating, imploring: pretty, pretty please, good people, describe the images you post!
I and fellow visually impaired people have shared help links, posted general PSAs, and asked pointedly for descriptions in countless photo threads. We’ve even argued with each other about whether blind people are morally obligated to set an example (we should at least try, don’t @ me). It’s practically a full-time job, and nobody is having fun here.
By this point, most people with any exposure to the visually impaired community know that describing images is the right, kind, inclusive thing to do. But many of us don’t always do the right thing – or if we do, we don’t do so consistently. After doggedly describing dozens of wedding photos with my very patient husband, I discovered that while the process is a ton of work, it’s rewarding in ways I’d never noticed before. I want you to notice them, too.
To that end, please accept this list of incentives to make images more accessible, which doesn’t include ‘because you just should, damn it’ (again, don’t @ me).

1. You Catch the Small Stuff

I’d gone over my wedding photos before posting them, but crafting alt text demanded that my husband and I scrutinize them more closely. In the process, he (and by extension, I) noticed small, gem-like details we’d originally missed, like a silly expression on someone’s face, or an interesting background object that changed the mood of the shot.
If you’re translating a photo into words, you’ll discover more than the literal contents of the image. A shallow description involves listing the objects in the frame and writing out any text that may appear. A deeper and more useful description means asking yourself what the image is trying to convey. What’s the significance? Why are you sharing it? Which details have you missed? Which memories, conversations, emotions does this analysis inspire? If you’re posting a meme rather than a personal photo, what context or added humour does the image lend to the text?
It sounds like a homework assignment, but it’s really quite fun!

2. You Learn Things

This is perhaps less applicable to a fully sighted persons’ experience, but as a blind person working with someone with vision to create my descriptions, I found myself learning things I’d never thought to ask about. They ranged from the mundane—there was a heart cleverly hidden in one of our wedding signs—to the mind-blowing (my dress had an intricate vine pattern I somehow missed). I also learned that you can see raindrops in photographs, and that mirror images look very cool in pictures for some reason.
The revelations aren’t likely to be overwhelming, but in taking the time to really break a photo down, you’ll occasionally stumble upon exciting information you’d never have thought to seek otherwise. You may also gain insight into what makes a compelling photo.

3. You Get to Be Creative

Not everyone relishes playing with words, but describing images is uniquely challenging because it demands that we find alternative ways to express visual elements. Even if you’re posting something as simple as a nature scene, cute kitten photo or promotional poster, dreaming up descriptions encourages you to stretch creatively, especially if you want your visually impaired audience to have roughly the same experience your sighted audience would.
I knew, for example, that sighted people would laugh at goofy photos showing the mingled joy and anxiety on our faces as we ran to the limo through torrential rain. We wanted our blind friends to share in the humour of such formally dressed people looking so silly and yet, so happy that no amount of rain could dampen their joy. To do that, we had to move beyond a utilitarian description like “wedding party runs through rain,” and take the time to describe the interplay of the serious occasion, the comic interruption, and the radiant happiness underpinning it all. Our efforts were so successful that numerous blind friends approached me to thank me for providing such engaging descriptions. Where they’d normally skip right by someone’s wedding photos, a lot of people took the time to slow down and enjoy mine. That may not be enough, in itself, to sway you, but gratitude is a lovely perk, don’t you think?
Besides, writing captivating descriptions is more fun than it sounds.

4. You Make Your Content Easier to Find

Let’s say you’re not posting ravishing shots of my rain-splattered face (easy there, I’m attached). Let’s suppose you’re posting material to your website or your blog or your business Facebook page. You want people to find you, which means you’re doing everything you can to improve search engine optimization. You’re using brief, descriptive page titles and body copy that’s dense with keywords. You’re ensuring your material matches what people are likely to search for, and you’re even buying ad space to make yourself more attractive to search engine algorithms.
Why not take it a step further? Add alt text to your images, and give people yet another way to find you. Alt text descriptions improve SEO, and it won’t cost you a dime. Plus, it helps blind people give you their money and share your content with the world. Who says you can’t be a good citizen and boost your brand at the same time?

5. You Avoid Hassel

When you choose not to describe your photos, you risk people like me sliding into your DMs or plunging into your comment sections with our alt text evangelism. Most of us are nice about it, admirably nice given how often it comes up, but who wants to hammer out slapdash descriptions on the fly because some rando named Meagan keeps bugging you? Not you!
I jest, but I can’t stress this enough: I frequently lack essential info because it was buried in an image, and that means wasting my time (and yours) trying to figure out what I’ve missed. If the description is there to begin with, even a basic one, everyone wins.

Go on. Appreciate your images on a deeper level. Learn new things. Make more money. Gain more followers.
More importantly, feel really good about yourself, because you are helping make the web a better place, one accessible image at a time.
Do the right thing. Describe your photos.

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Dear Facebook: We Need To Talk

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Facebook, honey, we need to talk. Seriously. This very instant.

I think I’ve been a good and faithful servant—I mean, user. I spend lots of time with you, usually every day, and have done so for several years. I have continued to check in with you daily despite the useless updates, the bewildering user interfaces, the sudden and unsettling amendments to your privacy statements—even your silly app, which enjoys draining my phone’s battery and sucking down data as though it were water in the desert. Through all of your confusing, outrageous shenanigans, I have done my best to navigate your bizarre design and even tolerated your overabundant ads with minimal grumbling. (I really, really enjoy grumbling, so please acknowledge the magnitude of my sacrifice. … Are you acknowledging? … Good, thank you.) In fact, Facebook, I love you so dearly and so faithfully that part of my current career depends rather heavily on interacting with you. I’m a social media specialist, Facebook, which means I have to work with you—and like it!
But, dear Facebook, you’ve shown me time and time again that you never really appreciated me. Yes, yes, you’re “free and always will be,” I know. I get it. I’m the user, not the customer. I’m the product. You sell my oh-so-exciting online life for far more than it ought to be worth, just so I can skip intrusive “suggested” posts to get to the good stuff. It’s business, this is the new normal—blah blah blah.
Still, darling, you’d think I might be worth almost enough to you, as a loyal user and frequent poster, to warrant a reasonably accessible environment. You see, Facebook dear, my eyes don’t work, and as such, you are an unpredictable and cruel companion.
One day, some complicated function works, and the next day you’ve broken it—again. Your much-lauded image description software—you know, that feature that meant we blind people would be able to “see” pictures—thinks dogs are cats and cats are dogs and any woman wearing white is a bride. It invents children that aren’t there and sometimes throws in an extra person, just to keep us all on our toes.
(“You got married? Again?”
“No no, I’m just wearing a white shirt. As you were.”)

I’ve lived in valleys of despair and soared to dizzying peaks of hope, perhaps a little naively. When you kept your mobile site clean and relatively accessible, I rejoiced. Alas, I rejoiced too soon: many of the features I wanted to use simply don’t work. Back to the sluggish, semi-inaccessible and wholly-infuriating desktop site I go, then.
I sang your praises when you introduced artificially intelligent software that would describe images, and the publicity it generated was very exciting indeed! Back to earth I drifted when I realized that not only was it laughably unreliable, but you were actually making sighted people think their days of describing pictures (very short-lived—I’d just gotten people to start doing it) were over. So, thanks and all, but please stop telling sighted people they don’t have to describe their pictures, cuz they do, maybe more than ever unless they want me to congratulate them on the new cat-dog or ask how married life is treating them.
I reveled in the simplicity of your Messenger app, reasoning that if you were going to get us all to use it by brute force if necessary, it may as well work. But, Facebook, you managed to break even that, so that I can’t scroll with any efficiency and am forced to ignore a whole lot of pointless nonsense on my cluttered screen.

This is not healthy, Facebook. At this point, I am staying for the good times, as they say. Each time you break accessibility or introduce a troublesome new feature, I grit my teeth and roll with the punches. When I struggle to perform basic aspects of my job because something on your end is mysteriously broken again, I smile through the pain and soldier on. If time is short and I don’t have an hour to fiddle with two versions of a website and an app, I call a sighted person over to help, silently cursing my dependency.

Meanwhile, you announce your access team with much fanfare and profess your commitment. You whisper (or shout, as the case may be) reassurances into my weary ear, promising that all will be well.

But you know what, Facebook? I don’t believe you.

Do I expect any of this to move you? No, of course not. You have me in a corner, and I must continue to shoulder the constant issues you create. My job and social life depend upon us getting along.
That said, dearest Facebook, I don’t have to like it.
And you know what? I don’t have to like you, either.
There, I said it. I love you, but I don’t really like you anymore.

Put your money where your mouth is. Use the same level of force to direct your accessibility team as you do to ensure that customers—I mean, users—use your ridiculous apps. If you put a fraction of the effort you pour into, say, the like button into accessibility, darling, we’d have a very different relationship, you and I.

So, Facebook, I ask only this. Until you make real, lasting strides in the direction of genuine usability and accessibility, please don’t pretend you care, because I’m done pretending I believe you.

Yours, very grudgingly,
A girl with broken eyes (and a broken heart)

Every Day is an Audio Challenge

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Every Day is an Audio Challenge

I’m ninety percent through the long and complicated process of filling out one of those lengthy internet sign-up forms. They’ve wanted everything from my phone number to my Social Insurance Number, and it’s getting a little excessive. There’s only one more field though, so I’m almost there… and then my screen reader cheerfully states  “Type the two words below! We need to check that you’re human!”. At this point, my very human impulses urge me to start keyboard mashing until something explodes. I calm down a little, though, since there’s an equally cheerful “Visually impaired? Get an audio challenge!” button below the text field.  Normally, when I hit this button, garbled but mostly comprehensible speech guides me so that I can successfully prove my humanity and move on with my life. Unfortunately, there are exceptions to everything, and this is one: I type the spoken numbers as carefully as I can, trying to ignore the weird, swirling background noise that sounds creepy enough to be a horror movie’s soundtrack. Then, with pounding heart, I hit “submit”. The page refreshes, and asks me to try again. So I do. And again. And again. And again. And because I am most definitely human, I give in to my exhaustion and give the whole thing up. So, no account for me, and there goes all the info I took so much time to input. Audio challenge, indeed!

When you’re a screen reader user, every day is an audio challenge. Websites change with the weather, and new updates often present more and more issues. Screen readers themselves are only updated now and then, so the only thing we’re left with is our ingenuity. Most often, larger websites will make a concerted effort to accommodate visually impaired  users, but even they slip up, and they slip up a lot.

The reason I choose to use the word “challenge”, though, is because I don’t mean to sit here and rant about how horrible it is that we can’t use the web as easily and efficiently as sighted people. As I’ve said before, disability automatically bars us from total and perfect equality, so to expect such out of the internet–a network that changes constantly–is only going to result in disappointment. However, there are some websites–large and small–that manage to provide a near-perfect experience, and they are what keep me from resorting to the keyboard mashing mentioned above.

I won’t waste space going into detail about which web features are useful and which are not; you’ll find many resources online that will give you far more information than I ever could. What I will do, though, is explain why accessibility is so important, and what inaccessibility can do to even the most casual of internet users.

I’ve seen the way sighted people react when they’re having difficulty with a website. They become very angry very quickly the moment something doesn’t operate exactly the way they expected it to. Sometimes such anger is justified, and sometimes it isn’t, but the point is that the frustration sighted people occasionally experience is something screen reader users deal with on a near-daily basis. We’re not talking about blind gamers who have difficulty performing complex maneuvers, or blind web developers struggling with code. We’re talking about the average, everyday user, who only wants to check her email and scroll idly through Facebook.

Take a very simple example: a friend of mine was recently struggling to get Facebook to sort her news feed by most recent post rather than by “top posts”. This should be a very easy task. All you have to do is check the little “sort” box so that the sort method is changed. It should be the work of five or so seconds. Unfortunately, she was having no such luck. On the  regular version of Facebook (the one that loads when you log in with your computer), the sort box isn’t even present. On the mobile version, it is present, but you can only access it with an iPhone, as far as I know. So, my friend would have had to switch to her iPhone specifically to log in via Safari, find the “sort” button, and tick the appropriate box. (Just to add insult to injury, Facebook automatically changes the sort style back after a few days, so this process must be repeated indefinitely. Facebook doesn’t like it when we think for ourselves.)

Sometimes, the consequences can be very serious. You might be thinking that being unable to sort your Facebook newsfeed to your liking isn’t much to get upset about, and for most people it isn’t. But what if inaccessibility begins to interfere with your performance at work or school? What if you can’t get a certain job purely because their databases don’t accommodate your screen reader? What if you can’t format a paper properly because of constraints beyond your control?

Here is the biggest accessibility stumbling block I’ve ever encountered: my university, like so many others, uses a platform called Blackboard to manage just about every aspect of university life. Assignments are posted there and must be submitted there. Notes are placed there for review and download. Readings are announced (yes, announced!) there and must be accessed before the next class. Some instructors even post links and other information there, so that if you can’t fully access Blackboard, you will find yourself very behind in a tearing hurry. Can you guess where this might be going? … Yes, exactly: Blackboard was not fully accessible with my screen reader when I started at university two and a half years ago. I could access some readings, but not others. I could click on some links, but not others. I could read some instructor announcements, but not others. As for downloading the files they uploaded? Forget it. I had other screen reader users try it, and none of them had any more success than I had. Until i managed to get instructors to understand that they’d have to eliminate Blackboard altogether when interacting with me individually, I was constantly struggling to find the material I needed, access it, and then post material of my own back to the site. I even know some professors who are so enamoured with Blackboard that they refuse to use any other medium (even email) regardless of the student’s issues with it.

So, sometimes we deal with a little more than a stubborn Facebook news feed. Sometimes we can’t even get hired because we won’t be able to use a company’s software properly. Sometimes we struggle with important tasks like online banking, student loan and scholarship applications, schoolwork, basic shopping, etc. Everything is online now, and alternatives to internet-based services are becoming more and more scarce. To say that it’s “just the internet” isn’t really a comfort anymore. Gone are the days when the biggest problem we had to face was an inability to access a message board about our favourite annagram games.

Experienced screen reader users (and anyone else who struggles with other accessibility issues) become very adept at working around most accessibility road blocks. Within seconds, I can post a question to my Twitter feed and receive answers (assuming my Twitter feed is accessible, of course!). We help each other out. We post detailed articles about how to circumvent some of the nastiest issues common to many of us. Getting by on the web, just as we do in real life, is something we’ve long realized will be the norm for the foreseeable future. However, whenever web developers help us out by making their websites easier to navigate, it offers us some much-needed breathing space. It’s lovely to visit a site and have it just…work. So, if you ever manage or develop a website of any sort, please consider being as inclusive as possible. Learn about all disabilities that hinder internet use–not just blindness–and do your bes to accommodate them wherever you are able. There are a significant number of us out there, and we could really use your help. Most often, the necessary changes are small and won’t interfere with the rest of your website.

Still need convincing? Have a look at a screen reader mailing list sometime, or cruise on over to a forum about accessibility issues. You’ll see staggering amounts of people in genuine need of assistance because they can’t make things work the conventional way. If you had to deal with that level of frustration every day, you might feel more inclined to help out.

Finally, I want to conclude by thanking all the web developers out there, sighted or blind, who continually work to make the web as accessible as possible. You guys are amazing and I am thankful for you every time things work as they should. You save me more time than you know (not to mention my limited sanity).