Add a way to filter posts that contain images with no alt text

[Yekrats]

Pitch

It would be nice if there would be some way of filtering out posts from one's feed that do not contain alt-text for images. Ostensibly, this would be a fairly simple query to write for the back-end. I would imagine it would be a simple check-box for the front-end in the Filter tab of the Preferences page.

Motivation

This would help mitigate the spread of images across the Fediverse without alt text.

[Cassolotl]

Just curious - @Yekrats, do you use a screen reader?

[Yekrats]

@Cassolotl No, I do not.

[Cassolotl]

Okay. :) My understanding is that alt text is not always useful, such as when it's obvious what's in the photo from the main body of the post, e.g. "Look at this cute photo of my cat wearing a little cowboy hat!" And in those situations, adding alt text is actually anti-helpful because it just repeats something and wastes time.

Having said that, I don't use a screen reader either, so we are just two sighted people speculating about what visually impaired people might want.

[YourAutisticLife]

Okay. :) My understanding is that alt text is not always useful, such as when it's obvious what's in the photo from the main body of the post, e.g. "Look at this cute photo of my cat wearing a little cowboy hat!" And in those situations, adding alt text is actually anti-helpful because it just repeats something and wastes time.

Having said that, I don't use a screen reader either, so we are just two sighted people speculating about what visually impaired people might want.

This is precisely the behavior that this filter aims to disfavor. We cannot prevent people from doing the above. However, what the person who posts the hypothetical picture above should do is make the text of the post say:

"Look at this cute photo."

And set the alt text of the image to "My cat wearing a little cowboy hat."

Yes, it does require some thinking on the part of the person who posts. That's what this change aims to promote: that people think about what they are posting so that people who use screen readers are not subject to pictures that don't have alt text.

And yes, this is a change that I've had to do for myself. I did not use to care about alt text, but now I do. So I've changed my posting habits to put alt text to my images. In some cases, this means cutting and pasting the textual content of the post as alt text. I don't feel great about this, but this, at least, don't leave people with screen readers wondering.

This is a fairly low bar to meet.

Also, I'll say that the textual content of a post may, sometimes, become divorced from the image that it accompanies. If I go to the "Media" tab of my profile, I see there all the images that I posted to Mastodon. If I click on an image, I get it blown up, with its alt text, but without the text of the post in which it was published.

[benaryorg]

do you use a screen reader?

I would like to mention that alt-text is an accessibility tool not just for people with impaired eyesight, although that is one of the primary concerns for people implementing it AFAIK.
Some pictures/videos/etc. just have a lot going on and are generally overwhelming, and alt-text can tell people what the actual content is.
Alt-text is often used to name people or things in there which others may not know like regional food which cannot be properly recognized without alt-text, or the picture of a person that mainstream media may be able to identify as Celebrity Foo, but that someone outside that bubble may not know.
Videos with flash images or such that cannot be watched by some people lest they really wanna have a seizure right now are also inaccessible without alt-text.

These are all different groups that run into different issues when people do not provide alt-text.
In a way it's media that just goes "hey look at this thing" without any thing for them to look at.

Yes, the primary goal of alt-text is to be accommodating to people who cannot otherwise perceive the media in question, and of course we should do that just because accommodating other people is the right thing to do.
However, for those that need extra convincing, how often have you been in a public place and there was an audio file or video in your timeline that you couldn't properly watch because you didn't have headphones with you and don't want to annoy the people around you?
How often have you been in a building with really bad reception and media has taken forever to load, but the alt-text was there right away so you could decide whether or not to wait for the media to load based on whether you thought it was interesting based on the alt-text?
Accessibility helps everyone.
However, I would like to make clear that helping people without issues perceiving the media should come second to helping the people who cannot participate otherwise at all.
I'm just here to name a few examples that make non-alt-texted media problematic in general to justify such a toggle.

[KreerC]

Hello, blind screen reader user and accessibility consultant here.

First of all, thanks for bringing this feature request and the general idea of such a filter to public attention. @YourAutisticLife has already explained very well why leaving the alt text empty is never a good idea. Blind people will generally not know and understand that the image contents are already described in the text.

Regarding the actual suggestion, I feel a bit conflicted about whether this is a good feature. I personally would probably opt not to use it, for the following reasons:

• Having the filter could encourage people to actively discriminate, telling people that they can simply hide posts without alt text through a simple setting and that they cannot be bothered with making their media inclusive.
• Seeing that Mastodon Web is the most used fediverse client by far, implementing this might trigger several political discussions where disabled users are very likely to be in the minority and in a rather weak position.
• This might spawn lots of qualitatively very bad alt or AI generated alt text (I consider this extremely bad) simply because people want to get around the filter, which helps absolutely nobody
• Missing alt text can be a reminder to always post with alt text itself
• Sometimes, people genuinely forget to add an alt text. They will probably start to wonder why their posts get much less interaction. They might get deterred from posting on the fediverse altogether.
• As a blind person, I will lose the full picture of what is actually happening in the world and what is supposed to be on my timeline. Especially as more and more politicians are using the platform, using this filter might have a severe impact on what sources I will notice that even exist on a topic.
• More and more screen readers introduce AI-based image description features in cases where no alt text is provided with the content. This can never replace a human caption by the poster, but in many cases it will be good enough for the user to make some more sense of the posts.

However, that's not the full picture. Arguments for such a filter might be:

• The filter could cause more users to provide alt text with their media, especially if there was a large-scale campaign surrounding it that would tell people to turn it on.
• It could potentially save a huge amount of time and frustration for blind users casually browsing a timeline.

There will be many blind people who would potentially favor such a feature, without having thought too much about its impact. When this feature is implemented, there should be some sort of explanation beside it.

Because this inevitably will come up as an argument: There are no "decorative" images on social media. User content by definition cannot be decorative. It has a highly communicative function, and people very often mark things as decorative when it really isn't.

Note that under a toot that promoted this issue, there were some sighted people saying they would only use the feature to remove posts they would not boost themselves because they want to be inclusive. Perhaps a better way to support this exact user group would be by marking undescribed media. Chaos.social, my home instance, already does this by adding a red bar beneath an image when it does not have alt text.

In the end, this will require quite a bit of political debate. I think that the negatives far outweigh the pros of this feature, at least from my POV: that of a blind, but politically very interested person. Before implementing it, perhaps it would be a good idea to test it through another very popular client and see how the network reacts. More people with disabilities (blind, visually impaired, neurodivergent, ...) should be brought into the discussion as well.

[Cassolotl]

I appreciate the comments from an accessibility consultant, but this is still a discussion entirely between people who are not affected by the feature in an accessibility way...

Does anyone know any [edit: any more!] people who use screen readers or who primarily view images as alt text for access reasons, who we can invite to comment here?

Edit: I'm a doofus, @KreerC said:

Hello, screen reader user and accessibility consultant here.

I just totally skipped over the part where they use a screen reader. 🤦 Sorry!

[KreerC]

As I already said in the post, I am a blind screen reader user and an accessibility consultant.

[Cassolotl]

As I already said in the post, I am a blind screen reader user and an accessibility consultant.

Somehow I missed that, I'm so sorry! I'll edit my snarky post. :D

[deborahgu]

Hi,

Self-identification

• accessibility consultant
• sighted
• disabled assistive tech user
• but not screen reader or braille display user
• sometimes switch to alt text with images off anyway, for both non-vision disabilities and age-related vision issues

This would be a great feature, honestly; I would sometimes use it and definitely tell other people about it.

In answer to the comment above from @Cassolotl:

My understanding is that alt text is not always useful

Unfortunately, if there's no alt at all (rather than blank alt), screen readers and braille displays default to reading something noisy and rarely-informative, usually the filename. I almost would rather there'd be a feature to mark images as decorative (alt="") so if the image is fully described in text people can just click a box to eliminate noise to the alt's consumer, but honestly it's hard enough getting full time content creators to understand what should be marked with alt="", and on a microblogging site it's just asking for trouble.

(Note: this does not mean absent alt should be replaced with blank alt; blank alt means a conscious decision has been made that this image is pure filler or is described in text elsewhere.)

[deborahgu]

Also, I understand why you're asking for people to self-identify and I'm not sure I wouldn't do the same, but, counterpoint, asking disabled people to out themselves online in order to have their opinions count is inherently problematic. A github account is (for many of us) tied to a personal or professional identity, and it's not always reasonable or safe to disclose disability status or assistive tech use in that context.

[rkingett]

As a screen reader user, I want this more than anything! I'd like to just get rid of all images on my timeline/audio/video/media that don't have a description! Far better than having people whine because we suggest they add it. But I'd like this added with some stipulations.

1. Give the user ability to mute and unmute decorative images indefinitely or via timed filters. For example, I might want to allow all images a week from now.
2. Give the user an option to have something displayed on their profile if they have decorative images muted, images without descriptions or really any media for that matter.
3. I'm torn between actively filtering out images with no alts or just marking them as decorative so screen readers could just ignore them. I fear if we actively filter out images without alts or any media without captions, that the filter could also catch false positives. Then again, I am unsure of how we would mark media without descriptions as decorative in the first place.
4. Give this a filter instance admins can toggle on and off instance wide. This way, they can let visitors know that they filter out media without descriptions.
5. There are people with physical disabilities that can't add alt text to media of any kind so I also think we should consider the suggestion of allowing suggestions of media descriptions to go along with this.

[unwaivering]

Here's a bit of an idea, just as an extra option, add a way to filter out all images. Don't make it required or mandatory at all. I just don't prefer to come across them, but that doesn't mean someone else won't.

[unwaivering]

As a bit of an addendum, I do use a screen reader, but not an accessibility expert in any way! On the part about alt text wasting time, it definitely can. I think if your just wanting to post something, a few words is fine.
It's a bit different if your going to charge me something from your own site. Of course then I want to know all about it.
I still think filtering out all images, as a preference would be cool. Of course no one would want to implement that.

[MadokVaur]

Pitch

> This would help mitigate the spread of images across the Fediverse without alt text.

Now that this has dragged on for a week with the usual digression to the screen-reader / accessibility issue, let's return to the original post:

This would help mitigate the spread of images across the Fediverse without alt text.

How exactly is that going to happen unless Mastodon as a distribution takes it upon itself to become a global Hall Monitor and post a nasty-gram back to anyone who does not use alt-text and who does have their posts filtered out by each individual person invoking this filter?

OK: the person using the filter sees no images without alt-text. Their loss, one might say. Are they going to trigger the nasty-gram themselves? Identifiable as being from them?

Or does Mastodon as a distribution at large implement a pretty draconian behavioral policy change, globally?

So how does the Original Poster ever learn anything?

People using the filter don't see images that offend them

The people (or bots, it must be said) posting the offending images have learned nothing

[rkingett]

I'd also be happy with a filter to remove all media, no matter what kind of media attachment it is, video, audio, et and just have text and links for a week or a day or something.

[deborahgu]

Now that this has dragged on for a week with the usual digression to the screen-reader / accessibility issue, let's return to the original post:

It's weird to think of accessibility as a digression on this of all questions. Regardless of the social issue, images without alt text provide noise that many screen reader and braille display users don't want, and giving those users an easy way to filter those posts would be an accessibility win for them. Images without alt text are noisy: they read a filename. On a long form page, knowing you missed something is important, so that feature is valuable. On a social media post where an undescribed image is often the lion's share of the post, some users will consider the noise unacceptable.

Whatever social engineering motivation @Yekrats had in making the feature request is irrelevant to the fact that this would improve the accessibility of the site for some disabled users.

[blaiddwyn]

i've requested this feature from Tapbot (developers of Ivory, which has an alt text reminder setting)… i always read alt text when available, cannot read text from images, and see many images of text without alt text or with inadequate alt text or description

[MadokVaur]

It's weird to think of accessibility as a digression on this of all questions. Regardless of the social issue, images without alt text provide noise that many screen reader and braille display users don't want, and giving those users an easy way to filter those posts would be an accessibility win for them.

You ignore my question, and my point

Exactly and with specificity: how do you go about making this a teachable moment and educate those who (for whatever reason) do not add alt-text to images they post?

The fact that there are those who use screen readers and Braille display readers is understood

How do you propose to go about reaching and educating those who do not use alt-text?

What is the mechanism of instruction?

[deborahgu]

No, I didn't ignore your point, I clarified that it's not relevant. I don't care if it's a teachable moment; that was @Yekrats's motivation with the original issue. My point is that it's a good feature. It's not a good feature to educate, it's a good accessibility feature, full stop.

[MadokVaur]

Helping people learn why they should be using alt-text is not relevant?

Really?

It (hiding posts lacking alt-text) affects only what the person using the filters sees

It does nothing to help the Original Poster learn why they should be using alt-text and it's not going to result in any sort of teachable moment for those who don't

So you're not interested in education and change, so much as an endless stream of opportunities for performative allyship by those complaining, directed at those you aren't interested in helping to learn

Got it

10-4 and out

[deborahgu]

No, I'm a disabled person who is interested in my tools being more accessible, and doesn't think the purpose of accessible software is to educate. I am confused by what it is you think I am saying but you are clearly much too angry at an invisible person to have a two-sided conversation about accessibility features, so I wish you peace with whatever has angered you.

[ryan-p-randall]

For whatever it's worth, two separate feature proposals remains a possibility.

This proposed one is aimed at individual users who want to control their own feed. Another feature could be proposed that would aspire to educating all users.

[rkingett]

So I don't think filtering out just images would work because audio/video gets interpreted the same as an image by Mastodon I believe, so this would filter out audio and or video as well if we have an option to hide all media/images.