Twitter has announced that it’s testing new accessibility options to make alt textual content descriptions considerably extra helpful and outstanding for everybody on the platform. With the change, photographs which have descriptions might be given a badge that claims “alt,” and clicking on that badge will present the outline. The change has been a very long time coming, however that’s not essentially a shock — Twitter didn’t have a devoted accessibility crew till 2020.
Based on Twitter, round 3 % of customers will get to check out the brand new options for a month, and it’ll roll out globally at first of April. Till then, it looks as if most individuals nonetheless received’t have entry to alt textual content descriptions except they’re utilizing a display screen reader or are prepared to leap by means of a whole lot of hoops.
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As Twitter notes at the end of its thread, customers have waited some time for this performance. Picture descriptions had been launched in 2016, however they haven’t been notably outstanding on the platform — it’s comparatively straightforward to overlook the button that permits you to add one. That could be due to how Twitter dealt with accessibility options prior to now. Up till late 2020, workers needed to volunteer to work on them alongside their common jobs, and there wasn’t a crew devoted to creating Twitter simpler to make use of for many who wanted it most. For the reason that crew’s creation, Twitter has added stay captions to voice tweets and movies.
We all know these options have been a very long time coming, and we’re grateful on your endurance. We’re additionally engaged on the picture description reminder. We’ll share extra on that quickly.
Till then, inform us what you consider the ALT badge and uncovered picture descriptions. (6 of 6)
— Twitter Accessibility (@TwitterA11y) March 9, 2022
It’s doable that making it apparent when a picture has alt textual content may make the characteristic extra in style — if individuals can clearly see which photos do and don’t have it, they might assume so as to add it subsequent time they publish one. Twitter’s thread mentions that the accessibility crew (which fortunately exists now) can be engaged on an “picture description reminder,” which may assist make alt textual content much more in style on the platform.
