What's in a Photo

Blog 14 – 2.6 Challenge – 26 blog posts over 26 days…

As mentioned in my previous post we live in a very photographic world. People constantly snap selfies, share funny memes and screen shot text. Unfortunately for people with no useful vision like myself photos can make us feel excluded from society. However, there is a way of making photos accessible on both Face Book and Twitter. Here’s how-

Face Book
After you have posted a photo, click on more. A list of options will appear. Click on edit alt text. Face Book is good in that it automatically generates alt text for images which sometimes gives an indication of what the photo might contain. It is possible to override the automatically generated text and write in your own description. Then when screen readers scroll over the image it will read the description out.

Twitter
Go to settings and privacy then click on accessibility. Scroll down to compose image descriptions and toggle the feature on. Now when you compose a new tweet and add in an image there will be an option to add a description for this photo. Again when a screen reader scrolls over the photo the description will be read out.

It is quick and easy to insert descriptions to make your photos more inclusive. Descriptions don’t have to be essays. For example, you could write ‘image of me smiling on the beach’ or ‘image shows yellow Labrador basking in the sunshine’. Any description is better than none and is much appreciated by screen reader users.

I am taking part in the 2.6 Challenge to help save our UK charities. If you enjoyed my blog post or are feeling generous please consider donating as little as £1 to support my chosen charities: The Norrie Disease Foundation, Guide Dogs for the Blind, Look UK, RNIB and Girl Guiding UK. You can find my fundraising page by clicking here

Thank you and stay safe x