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TRANSCRIPT
Social Media and Alt Text
Jennie Delisi| Accessibility Analyst
Alt Text Has Multiple Uses
Provides “machine readable text”
• Assistive technologies can read this (most important!)
• Those who don’t download images can see it
• And…Google can “index it”
Indexing…Google analyzes the content of the page, catalogs images and video files embedded on the page... This information is stored in the Google index, a huge database stored in many, many (many!) computers.
To improve your page indexing…
Use text rather than images to convey content. (Google can understand some image and video, but not as well as it can understand text. At minimum, annotate your video and images with alt text and other attributes as appropriate.)
-Google Search Console Support (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/70897)
Good Alt Text…
• Is concise
• Communicates why the image is there, not just the contents
• Does not include “graphic” or “image”
• announced by screen reading software prior to reading your alt text
Twitter - Desktop
• Has automated alt text – it may surprise you!
• May identify people without you knowing
• May not be appropriate/what you want described
LinkedIn Post
LinkedIn Article Image
Scheduling Apps
• Choose scheduling apps that enable you to add image descriptions/alt text
• E.g. Tweetdeck
• Back up plan – go old school
• Add image descriptions into your post
And remember…
Some people that do not use assistive technologies may need/want image descriptions
• Who is in this photo?
• Why did you post this?
• Where was this taken?
• Why are you sharing this?
Your post text can contain this information and assist more of your readers, including those that do not use assistive technology.
