hi, bluesky. it's time we had a chat about alt text.

Imagine this: you’re walking down the street as you’re on the phone having a casual conversation with a friend. And now, BAM! Something absolutely spectacular has just happened, and whatever it is, it’s something that your friend must know about. Right now. What’s your next move? How do you tell your friend what’s happening in a way that allows them to share the experience? And wait a minute…what does any of that have to do with Bluesky and posting images and alt text or image descrptions? Well. That’s a long story.

To begin with, it’s going to be important to understand exactly what alt text is and how it works and to understand exactly what people mean when they talk about it on Bluesky. Alt text is itself not a new thing—it’s been around for literally decades, and it was conceived as an accessibility initiative to assist people with low vision or with complete sight loss to navigate the Web properly. It’s a pithy thing—typically an affair of about 100 characters or thereabouts—that a screen reader can use to recognise and describe images.

On Bluesky, “alt text” is synonymous with “image description,” meaning that its function is to provide (to the extent that it’s possible) an equivalent experience to all users of the service with primary reference in this case to persons with no/low vision and to the neurodivergent. That takes MUCH more than 100 characters and includes all relevant image details. It’s that spectacular thing that you’re describing to your friend over the phone—you give them everything: shock and awe; blood and guts. On Bluesky, Gregory Rosmaita did some work to provide a guide that gave his perspective as a blind person as to how these descriptions could be used to provide the most benefit and the best experience while using the service. It’s a valuable insight into what good alt text or image descriptions can potentially look like.

So yes. I’m saying a lot, but I haven’t really said anything so far about (a) why anyone would give a shit about any of this or (b) why they would even bother to include alt text when they post images. It’s a simple answer, though. Without alt text, people who use screen readers are cut off from all the visual content that provides context and support for written information online. A picture’s only worth a thousand words if you can actually understand what’s depicted. So, to include as many people as possible in our conversations and to facilitate the clearest communication, it’s important that everyone gets to work with the same information. And it’s not just users of screen readers who need that context. It’s folks who are neurodivergent and it’s people who have sensory processing issues, and it’s people who may have limited experience dealing with visual context cues, and the list goes on.

It's not a coincidence that the people who benefit most from having alt text attached to images posted on Bluesky are the ones who sometimes have the most difficulty adding it themselves. That said, there’s a culture of accessibility that’s beginning to appear here that you may not typically see on social media platforms. It can sometimes be an aggressive culture in that it’s easy to find plenty of Bluesky users who will remind you at every chance that WE USE ALT TEXT AROUND HERE. But it’s important to remember that it’s not always that easy for some of us to just type some fucking alt text and that it doesn’t always make sense to be aggressive about the way we approach people who don’t always add descriptions to their posted images. Conflicting needs exist for conflicting disabilities, and if you can’t take a minute to consider that before publishing a sanctimonious rant about how everyone needs to do better with their alt text, then maybe—just maybe—you’re the asshole in that situation.

Another thing to understand is that some disabilities can be dynamic. That means that the person who might have been able to write alt text with ease on Monday could have significant trouble doing the same thing on Tuesday and Wednesday. When Thursday comes around, it may be another good day. We can never know what it costs for someone else to be able to do what seems to us like the easiest thing in the world. What we should always remember is that over a long enough timeline everyone will experience a change in their skills and abilities, likely for the worse, and that we should be respectful of others' challenges. Mental fatigue and forgetfulness…sensory processing disorders…physical incapacity…these are all things that can easily prevent us from typing those few (or many!) extra characters that make up an image description. That doesn’t mean that these issues should lock posters out of being able to put images out there. In a perfect world, Bluesky would be 100% accessible to everyone, and everyone would be diligent about adding descriptions every time they posted an image. Since we don’t live in that world, maybe in this imperfect world we could consider that there may sometimes be a very good reason behind a lack of alt text with a posted image.

On the subject of kindness: there are ways that we can help make the site more accessible for those who can benefit from this particular type of accommodation. I’m not sure how many people know that there are resources available for folks who don’t always post with alt. If that’s you, these things may be news:

When the keyword “alt4me” (or “AltForMe”—with or without spaces; case insensitive) shows up anywhere in a post or in image alt text, that post is published to a feed monitored by volunteers who will then add copy the image and add a version with an appended description as a top-level reply to the original post or as a quote post.

There were at one time a couple of bots that were able to assist with alt: @alttext.bsky.social used "AI" to provide image descriptions and some context for posted images. @alt-text.bsky.social used OCR to parse text-heavy images. Each could be invoked by typing the username as a reply to a posted image. The former has been deprecated and no longer responds to invocations for help. The latter is still being maintained as of this writing.

If you're a mobile user, iOS is decent at using OCR to read text-heavy images. You can even automate that process by using shortcuts if you're savvy about that kind of thing.

Android? Google has you covered--use Lens to copy the text straight from the image and paste it as alt in your Bluesky post.

If you dig into your Bluesky settings, you’ll find a toggle at Settings > Accessibility that will let you choose to Require alt text before posting.

Last thing. There are a ton of resources available online that are better than I am at explaining the intricacies of this alt text/image description business, and I’ve linked them below. First are links to posts from Bluesky user Wren , who’s one of the biggest advocates for the use of alt text anywhere on the site.

Bluesky Post about using Alt Text (1 of 2)

Bluesky Post about using Alt Text (2 of 2)

Wren has also created a post on their blog that gives some insight into how to write alt text for art. And here's another series of posts from Bluesky user Eb that will get you heading in the right direction.

And here’s some good reading from other places on the Web.

Against Access

My Disability Is Dynamic

Tips and Tricks | Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) | W3C

Complex Images | Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) | W3C

Write helpful Alt Text to describe images

How to Write Alt Text and Image Descriptions for the visually impaired--Perkins School for the Blind

Image Alt Text Best Practices For Web Accessibility

How screen readers read special characters: an update

[tutorial] writing alt text

What Is Alt Text? Why You Should Use It, and How to Write It

Accessibility and the Problem of Alt Text

Alt Text for Artwork, Alt Text as Artwork

How To Write Alt Text For Digital Comics

Making Your Webcomic Accessible: a grab-bag of tips & tricks

And oh! About that spectacular thing that just happened? Hopefully you're now a little bit better equipped to tell your friend about it.