The Hidden Image Descriptions Making the Internet Accessible
Three different alt text examples over a blank box.
Leonardo da Vinci’s painting, the Mona Lisa.
A painting of a person.
May be an image of one person and strawberry.
Mona_Lisa,_by_Leonardo_da_Vinci,_from_C2RMF_retouched.jpg
Example alt text descriptions from Microsoft Word, Facebook and Wikipedia.
Leonardo da Vinci’s painting, the Mona Lisa.
By Meg Miller and Ilaria Parogni
Feb. 18, 2022
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/02/18/arts/alt-text-images-descriptions.html?smid=em-share The text boxes above are examples of alt text, which people who are blind or have low vision often rely on when navigating the web. When it’s available, the text can be detected and read aloud or translated into Braille through screen readers, assistive technology that can be accessed in the form of software programs, apps or even browser extensions. For these users, alt text is essential to the online experience.
But it is not always available, or even helpful. Haben Girma, a lawyer and disability rights advocate, said she frequently comes across words like “‘image,” “jpg” or “graphics” when navigating the web with a screen reader. “That doesn’t tell me anything,” she added.
And in an image-saturated world — over 63 million were uploaded to Instagram alone in a single day in February, according to
Internet Live Stats
https://www.internetlivestats.com/— it can be difficult for people who are blind or have low vision to fully experience the web.
Three alt text examples for an image of pancakes.
Five small pancakes on a plate topped with raspberries, blueberries, lemon zest and syrup.
May be an image of fruit.
A slice of pizza sitting on top of a white plate.
A plate of pancakes with fruit.
Examples of A.I.-generated alt text from Facebook, Alt Text Chrome Extension and Microsoft Word.
Five small pancakes on a plate topped with raspberries, blueberries, lemon zest and syrup.
Partly in response to this changing landscape, disability rights advocates, people with vision-related disabilities and technologists alike have been coming up with ways to increase the presence and the quality of alt text.
Alt text is usually tucked away in a web page’s HTML code, the language that defines how information will appear on a browser. Screen readers can access the information and translate it into a format that users can interact with, but for those without the assistive technology, alt text would not be apparent.
A kitten at the window.
This is the code that contains the image’s alt text. Here’s what a screen reader would sound like when encountering this image.
Many social media platforms have features that enable people to add alt text to their posts manually. On sites that permit a longer word count on posts, like Instagram, people may even include the description of the image they are sharing in the caption accompanying it.
Despite the presence of these options, the practice remains little known and mystifying to many.
One analysis of a million homepages, by
WebAIM,
https://webaim.org/projects/million/ a nonprofit organization affiliated with Utah State University that focuses on web accessibility, found that as of February 2021, 60.6 percent had instances of missing alt text. A Carnegie Mellon
study
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jbigham/pubs/pdfs/2019/twitter-alt-text.pdfin 2019 of 1.09 million tweets with images found that only 0.1 percent of those tweets included alt text. (The New York Times has been working on rolling out alt text for its images.)
Three alt text examples for one image containing President Joe Biden.
President Joe Biden, wearing a medical mask, walking down a flight of stairs out of a green helicopter. Three men in uniform salute him with their right arms from the ground.
May be an image of 5 people, people standing and outdoors.
A group of people standing next to a train.
A group of men standing next to a helicopter.
Examples of A.I.-generated alt text from Facebook, Alt-Text Chrome Extension and Microsoft Word.
President Joe Biden, wearing a medical mask, walking down a flight of stairs out of a green helicopter. Three men in uniform salute him with their right arms from the ground.
In Search of Solutions
Some companies have turned to artificial intelligence to increase the presence of alt text. Microsoft and Google have both developed features that use A.I. to automatically generate alt text. In 2016,
Facebook debuted its own “automatic alt text,”
https://engineering.fb.com/2016/04/04/ios/under-the-hood-building-accessibility-tools-for-the-visually-impaired-on-facebook/ which uses A.I. to identify objects in images, which it also added to Instagram in 2018. (Instagram Stories does not have an option for alt text.) Cynthia Bennett, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute, who is blind and uses a screen reader, said that artificial intelligence and automation have enabled alt text to be generated much more widely. But the descriptions she comes across, she added, “tend to not be very high quality.”
A.I.-generated text can indeed be puzzling: “I have been in situations where the A.I. will say, ‘A person holding a gun,’ and that person is not holding a gun,” Girma said. “The A.I. got confused. Or it says, ‘A child in a chair.’ But it’s not a child; it’s an adult.”
An industry has also sprung up to address issues of quality and scale, with some companies taking a human-based approach and others working on auto-generated alt text.
One company, Scribely, offers alt text written by people. Its chief executive, Caroline Desrosiers, said that while A.I. can identify objects, humans are far better at deciding which parts of an image are important to describe. Also, she said, “Alt text needs to be short and succinct, so we have to make a call on which details that we choose to highlight.”
The start-up CloudSight focuses instead on mustering the power of algorithms. Brad Folkens, the chief executive and co-founder of the company, said that its A.I. had to rely on human review in its early stages of development, to ensure the quality of its descriptions. But, he added, the technology has since evolved to be able to function independently. It “does a good enough job” for CloudSight’s clients, he said. (The company still offers human-reviewed services at a premium.)
Some disability rights advocates say that A.I. alt text is improving — yet still often misses the context and what Chancey Fleet, a disability rights advocate and tech educator, calls the “emotional valence” of a human description. “For example, a photo from a Black Lives Matter protest would be something like ‘people street demonstration,’” Fleet said, “and that just does not suffice in moments of importance.”
Three alt text examples for one image of the Poler Napsack.
A bright red sleeping bag with drawstrings near the base, a retractable hood, a front pocket and zipper that spans the top half of the sleeping bag.
The our pick for the best wearable lleeping bag the Poler Napsack.
a person holding a pair of skis in the snow.
A picture containing work-clothing.
Alt text examples from Wirecutter, The New York Times’s product recommendation service; Alt Text Chrome Extension; and Microsoft Word.
A bright red sleeping bag with drawstrings near the base, a retractable hood, a front pocket and zipper that spans the top half of the sleeping bag.
The Push for Alt Text
The inclusion of alt text is a no-brainer to those championing its consistent, wider use.
Some observers, like Thomas Reid, a voice actor and podcast host who is blind, say that social media is helping them broadcast their message and make people more aware. “We’re having these conversations in public, and it’s easy to jump into them,” Reid said.
Girma, who is blind, regularly uses her Instagram and Twitter accounts to invite others to write alt text for the images they post online, as well as to share suggestions on
how to craft alt text
https://twitter.com/habengirma/status/1279546896218873857 and to
direct followers to useful resources.
https://twitter.com/habengirma/status/1345809172298780674 “You don’t need to describe every leaf and detail. Write one or two sentences describing the main point of the image,” the caption of one of
her Instagram posts reads.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CJmEVyRMzRV/She is not the only one providing detailed advice on social media.
In a Twitter post
https://twitter.com/BlondeHistorian/status/1422287809524678663, a blind activist, Amy Kavanagh, advises her followers to think about context: “If it’s a fashion picture, tell me about the clothes. If it’s a group photo, I don’t need every outfit described.”
Imani Barbarin, a communications professional and disability rights advocate, uses
her TikTok account
https://www.tiktok.com/@crutches_and_spice/video/6951479973194632453?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1&lang=en to urge others in her industry to include alt text in their resources for brands and nonprofits: “That’s part of your job,” she says in one video, “you have to include it.”
Alt text from Getty Images for a stock photo hosted there.
A diverse group of five people in office attire looking up at the camera, smiling, raising their fists.
Teamwork saves the day : Stock Photo
a group of people standing next to each other.
A group of people jumping.
Examples of alt text from Getty Images, Alt-Text Chrome Extension and Microsoft Word.
A diverse group of five people in office attire looking up at the camera, smiling, raising their fists.
The artists Bojana Coklyat and Shannon Finnegan have taken a robust approach with
Alt Text as Poetry
https://alt-text-as-poetry.net/ — a website, workbook and series of workshops — in their effort to encourage the use of alt text among artists and on social media.
“When you’re online or on Instagram to have fun or feel a sense of belonging, and you’re constantly getting these dry, minimal descriptions, it takes away from that delight or pleasure,” said Coklyat, who has low vision.
Finnegan and Coklyat said that when people use expressive or playful alt text on social media, in either the HTML or written into a caption, they can expose others to the practice, and inspire them to try it.
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