Concerning image descriptions, "better than nothing" is a thing of the past

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

An avatar roaming the decentralised and federated 3-D virtual worlds based on OpenSimulator, a free and open-source server-side re-implementation of Second Life. Mostly talking about OpenSim, sometimes about other virtual worlds, occasionally about the Fediverse beyond Mastodon. No, the Fediverse is not only Mastodon.

Even if you see me on Mastodon, I'm not on Mastodon myself. I'm on Hubzilla which is neither a Mastodon instance nor a Mastodon fork. In fact, it's older and much more powerful than Mastodon. And it has always been connected to Mastodon.

I regularly write posts with way more than 500 characters. If that disturbs you, block me now, but don't complain. I'm not on Mastodon, I don't have a character limit here.

I rather give too many content warnings than too few. But I have absolutely no means of blanking out pictures for Mastodon users.

I always describe my images, no matter how long it takes. My posts with image descriptions tend to be my longest. Don't go looking for my image descriptions in the alt-text; they're always in the post text which is always hidden behind a content warning due to being over 500 characters long.

If you follow me, and I "follow" you back, I don't actually follow you and receive your posts. Unless you've got something to say that's interesting to me within the scope of this channel, or I know you from OpenSim, I'll most likely deny you the permission to send me your posts. I only "follow" you back because Hubzilla requires me to do that to allow you to follow me. But I do let you send me your comments and direct messages. If you boost a lot of uninteresting stuff, I'll block you boosts.

My "birthday" isn't my actual birthday but my rezday. My first avatar has been around since that day.

If you happen to know German, maybe my "homepage" is something for you, a blog which, much like this channel, is about OpenSim and generally virtual worlds.

#OpenSim #OpenSimulator #VirtualWorlds #Metaverse #SocialVR #fedi22

The Hypergrid

hubzilla (AP)

Jupiter Rowland

2 months ago • •

Jupiter Rowland
2 months ago • •

Concerning image descriptions, "better than nothing" is a thing of the past

The requirements for image descriptions especially on Mastodon are constantly rising; CW: long (over 2,000 characters), Fediverse meta, alt-text meta, image description meta

Mastodon is increasingly moving from #NoAltTextNoBoost to #CrappyAltTextNoBoost, and I can see it move further to #NotEnoughAltTextNoBoost.

It is moving from only ostracising people for not providing image descriptions past ostracising people for providing useless image descriptions towards ostracising people for providing AI-generated image descriptions because they're at least partially wrong. The next victims may be people whose image descriptions leave out elements in the image which others may deem necessary to describe.

As quality requirements for image descriptions are being raised, I can't possibly lower the quality of my own image descriptions. If anything, I'll continue to upgrade my own image descriptions to stay ahea

Mastodon is increasingly moving from #NoAltTextNoBoost to #CrappyAltTextNoBoost, and I can see it move further to #NotEnoughAltTextNoBoost.

This is also why I'm worried about moving the long descriptions from the post text body into linked external documents. Not having certain descriptions and any explanations anywhere in the post anymore may backfire, and the external documents themselves may not be accessible and inclusive after all.

Interestingly, this is not congruent with what I read from actually non-sighted people. They don't even seem to care for accuracy which they can't verify anyway as long as the image description is funny and/or whimsical. Since it seems to be exactly that what AI delivers, it's no wonder that many blind people prefer image descriptions from BeMyAI over image descriptions from human experts.

I think I'll keep on writing my monster descriptions, two for each original image. If any of you who aren't sighted don't like them for not being whimsical enough, feel free to ignore the hours or days of work I've put into them, fire up your AI and have your own image description generated.

@accessibility group @a11y group

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #MastodonPolice #FediPolice #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Blind #VisuallyImpaired #A11y #Accessibility #AI #AIVsHuman #HumanVsAI

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eshep

in reply to Jupiter Rowland • 2 months ago •

I wonder, should I start holding people responsible for not explaining things they didn't write directly to me, in a way that makes it easy for me to understand? 😜

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Jupiter Rowland

in reply to eshep • 2 months ago • •

@eshep Maybe not you. But I can't exclude others doing so if image description standards develop the way they do.

Sure, they'll be a tiny minority. But so are blind users.

#ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

#imagedescription #imagedescriptions #CWImageDescriptionMeta #ImageDescriptionMeta @eshep

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