Update from previous blog

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. 

1. WebAIM: Alternative Text

2. WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools (webaim.org)

3. How to Meet WCAG (Quickref Reference) (w3.org)