I've been thinking a lot about the Fediverse ALT issue.

Some people are annoyed by posts without Alttext, & others get reminded¹ to add it.

The core question is: How can we improve accessibility?

Proposal: ☑️ Add a user filter to hide media posts without AltTag ☑️ Reduced engagement on hidden posts would encourage adding Alt text ☑️ People who need accessibility wouldn't have to encounter unlabeled media

If this gets traction, I'll open a Mastodon GitHub issue (maybe on others too?).

¹ https://mastodon.social/@madeindex/113996311493021102

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[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

There is already a not-hidden field presented when making a post to fill in alt-text on Lemmy, but I wonder how many users know its purpose. It assumes everyone knows what it is. It would be helpful if it had a short explination next to the input field, with a link to a larger explination and why it should be used.

And for images that are just screenshots of tweets or are otherwise just text, maybe some kind of image to text process can be done automatically to fill the alt-text out. 🤷‍♂️

[–] madeindex@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I guess even a questionmark (with a link to a popular website explaining it) next to the alt-field would suffice.

Mastodon actually already has that, but manually! :)

[–] frischkaesbagett@feddit.org 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

I created a github issue for alt Text warn before post and the developer immediatly started to work and it seems like he improved it really fast: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/pull/4021

10/10 can recommend would do it again

Edit: added rating

[–] madeindex@lemmy.world -1 points 4 months ago

wow that is fast!!! Mastodon is definitely slower in this particular case! Somebody sent me a similar ticket from 2024 ;)

[–] beveradb@sh.itjust.works 0 points 4 months ago (2 children)

These days, it would probably be more effective to make it easy for instance operators hook up a local multi modal llm to the server to auto generate alt text for all images posted on their instance. I'd happily donate to cover the infrastructure costs for any instance owner who was doing that

[–] Cris_Citrus@piefed.zip 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

While I understand the potential value of that, it is worth also acknowledging that ai will never understand the human, social, contextual meaning of things its providing alt text for, and theres a fair argument to be made that folks with disabilities deserve those things

Id welcome perspectives from folks with relevant disabilities who use or depend on alt text :)

[–] Sproid@bohio.icu 1 points 2 months ago

They may deserve it but between No alt text and good-to-passable alt text, 🤷‍♂️

[–] madeindex@lemmy.world -1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Definitely more effective than every disabled person etc. having to generate it! Have you seen the Mastodon image text to alt text feature? I guess they could simply expand on that?