I did talk with 2 ladies Katrina and Sarika who had just graduated from their master’s program which involved research on how to make pictures on websites more accessible.
They gave me an
overview of how I should go about doing that.
They explained that
the alt (alternative text) option is the part where you insert the description
of the image in order for it to be picked up by screen reading software’s.
How to go about writing
the description
Make the description relevant
to the message you are trying to put across from the image.
For example, for the picture below, you can put an alt saying, “A picture of Mary holding a book while leaning on a statue.” Or you can just write the alt as “A picture of Mary.”
From what I noticed, no 2 people can write the description the same and
it all depends on the message one is trying to put across.
From the picture above, you can tell that I did not mention the surrounding
areas like “the bright flowers behind and the shrub besides me in the picture,
or how the statue is oriented i.e., it’s sitting on a bench”
I asked whether it is unfair that when writing the alt, we might leave
out some information and we get to decide what information someone who is visually
impaired should know about a picture.
I was told it all goes down to the information you are trying to put
across and ensuring that it does not make a lot of noise and override the
purpose.
I guess that makes sense, we wouldn’t want to end up annoying the person
using the screen reader with too much unnecessary information about a picture.
We are learning, we are getting there, one step at a time but there is absolutely
every need to rush (pun intended) 😅😅.
I would like to find out.
If you are someone using a screen reader, please share your experience in the comments below on alternative text and how would you like it to improve.
Below are some resources that Katrina and Sarika shared with me that you might find useful when writing alternative text and also a tool that checks if a website is accessible.
2. WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools (webaim.org)
