😮 Bluesky pro-tip: in the accessibility settings, you can enforce that the images you post must have alt text. This is important for folks who use screen readers. Instead of seeing the image, the supplied text will be read to them instead. - ThreadSky

joshwcomeau.com • 118 days ago

😮 Bluesky pro-tip: in the accessibility settings, you can enforce that the images you post must have alt text.

This is important for folks who use screen readers. Instead of seeing the image, the supplied text will be read to them instead.

Comments

joshwcomeau.com•118 days ago

With this setting enabled, you’ll see a warning near the top of the composer, and it won’t let you post.

joshwcomeau.com•118 days ago

There’s also a section that allows you to turn off autoplaying videos, which is helpful for folks who have motion/vision issues, or who just don’t want stuff to autoplay!

rbs-tito.bsky.social•118 days ago

I love this feature! Thanks for sharing

davy.quest•118 days ago

This should be the default for @bsky.app , great tip :)

haitranthe.bsky.social•112 days ago

Great tip! Learn a lot from you <3

jodylecompte.com•118 days ago

Oh, nice tip!

I try my hardest to always add an alt tag but I still do forget sometimes, this will help

alexmoldovan.dev•118 days ago

Just saw this today, I had a moment when I wondered if this shouldn't be on by default, would love to see platforms pushing for more accessible content

atinux.com•118 days ago

This is a great tip, thank you for sharing it

chriswu.com•118 days ago

Thank you so much. I didn’t know they had added this.

schier.co•118 days ago

Nice. Enabling!

jclahoot.bsky.social•118 days ago

What are some tips to writing good alt-text?

joshwcomeau.com•118 days ago

Not sure if Bluesky notifies you, but I quoted this question and gave my answer in a thread 😄

https://bsky.app/profile/joshwcomeau.com/post/3l7vli5xifk25

joshwcomeau.com•118 days ago

Oh nvm! Just saw you replied to it.

kola-design.bsky.social•103 days ago

Uploading the image into chat GPT and asking it to create an alt text for you 😄

numb.comfortab.ly•117 days ago

This is probably an unpopular take, but helping with alt-text is the only good usage of AI. Image recognition detects and describes details I can otherwise miss, especially on complex images. Not to mention it can transcribe texts from screenshots.

tidaltheory.io•118 days ago

I’ve found this to be a handy place to start:

camchenry.com•118 days ago

This is an excellent article from @ericwbailey.website that helped make writing alt text feel a little bit more intuitive and familiar (and entertaining!): https://ericwbailey.website/published/dungeons-and-dragons-taught-me-how-to-write-alt-text/

denm.ch•117 days ago

Hello, fellow (though unrelated) 3-letter-first-named McHenry from Pennsylvania working in tech and interested in accessibility.

camchenry.com•117 days ago

There are dozens of us!

joshwcomeau.com•116 days ago

Omg it’s a McHenry convention!

Since you mentioned Pennsylvania, I hope you won’t mind if I ask whether you have a plan to vote, if you haven’t already? 😅

The world will be watching y’all on Tuesday!

camchenry.com•116 days ago

We just received our mail in ballots so sending those in ASAP 🙂

denm.ch•116 days ago

I'm from Philadelphia, but moved to Seattle 12 years ago, so haven't been a PA voter for three cycles. But we drop off our ballots early in WA, and mine has long been counted.

antonydb.bsky.social•117 days ago

https://jakearchibald.com/2021/great-alt-text/

willradford.bsky.social•117 days ago

Any ideas why I can't navigate bluesky with my keyboard, the tab function works, but the enter key does nothing

imlunahey.com•118 days ago

they really need an option to reuse the last saved caption for GIFs via tenor.

hipstersmoothie.com•118 days ago

Make an issue on the GitHub repo!

samwho.dev•118 days ago

Yes! Or some sort of community notes-esque system of sourcing good alt text from other users.

farsendor.bsky.social•117 days ago

Already have it enabled, always a good reminder though.

kesselrunner528.bsky.social•117 days ago

I did. It's a nuisance, but a good one

luciacerchie.bsky.social•118 days ago

frankly I like being able to toggle off autoplay as well! thanks for the heads-up

tlbvr.com•118 days ago

I would be in favour of not making this opt-in and enforce it for everybody by default.

joshwcomeau.com•118 days ago

Yeah, me too. But I can also understand that it’s extra friction that other networks don’t have, and adoption is fragile. They probably don’t want to risk people getting annoyed and leaving.

mort3301.bsky.social•118 days ago

Can't wait to turn it on and then turn it off a day later when it becomes too inconvenient.

I wonder, has anyone thought of making an AI-powered browser extention that can generate alt-texts for images on the fly?

haz.dev•118 days ago

That’s really important.

jesperbylund.bsky.social•117 days ago

Solve it with ai in the app. Better experience for users.

jacobherrington.dev•118 days ago

Interested, I hadn’t found that setting yet

@bsky.app is there a strong opinion on why this isn’t on by default?

j3ss1e.bsky.social•118 days ago

I'm not having this option on but I'm too picky to not include such things in every image manually.

lucacolonnello.bsky.social•118 days ago

You would think this could be done by AI by now 🤔

patak.dev•118 days ago

Oh, this is great. We never got to add this feature to Elk.

funt.im•118 days ago

Massively support this design decision, great outlook. Empowers users to do better without forcing it upon people and avoiding resentment etc. the job is to encourage people to switch on by their own consent, at their own pace. Another +1 for the team.

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