Twitter Improves Image Access for Visually Impaired
Accessibility improvements on Twitter will now make it possible for the visually impaired to access images. Those who post messages can now make use of 420 characters to describe the images they are uploading. These posts may then be accessed by the visually impaired in the usual way they get to posts, by use of assistive technology, such as text-to-speech screen readers and Braille displays.
The feature can be accessed on the 'Me' tab on Twitter. Tapping the gear icon will bring the user to the section on 'Settings.' From there, the 'Accessibility' option could be selected, where the 'Compose image descriptions' feature can be toggled on, and this enables the feature. To use the feature, users can select the button for 'Add description' when composing a tweet with an image.
Twitter's visually impaired users have been using EasyChirp and Alt Text Bot for alternative texting. But, in building the features of these workarounds into the product, Twitter makes it so much simpler for those with special needs to get to photo descriptions. Accessibility is not the only advantage with the new approach. Search engines will also find the images more easily when labeled in this manner.
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The service has been working on making improvements which include the tweet editing, word limit expansion, and accessibility options. And in order to better reach publishers and developers, Twitter has updated its REST API and Twitter Cards to extend the newest options to these groups.
Developers have been trying to find a solution to image accessibility among visually impaired. EasyChirp and Alt Text Bot were created in 2014, so descriptions of images could be included. There is wide appeal for this kind of support among publishers and developers.
The newest update is also available to mobile users only, for now, seeing that, out of 320 million Twitter users, 80 percent are on mobile. So even though it has not been made available on the web as yet, majority of users are still being reached.
Twitter is a real-time information network connecting people to the latest information based on interests of the user simply by 'following' these conversations.
As of today, users posting images on the site may already add descriptions for those images.
