there's been another wave of Alt Text Discourse on bluesky and uuuuugh. i need to get some shit out of my system. this maybe seems petty but it's dug up Some Feelings. just at the top here i'd like to say: i am not asking for solutions to make alt text easier for me to write. i know them. i know. i know.
i know. the
badgering and the constant assumption that i just don't know how to write it, or that i just don't know the work-arounds for common blocks, is part of the problem here, and i'm going to address that here. it's just, this has dug up some legit disability trauma for me. please offer me a little grace while i
Get Real Mad.
this accidental essay started off as an attempt to talk frankly about about alt text, demands thereof, and why some disabled people might struggle with it. but it's kinda more about the cumulative exhaustion that happens via the "small" and "easy" things people ask of you, when you're disabled.
up front: i am decidedly non-neurotypical; i am diagnosed with ADHD and anxiety, and i've been therapist-and-RAADs-R-test diagnosed as "almost autistic but not quite but
kinda." i have a myriad of physical conditions that cause chronic pain in my hands, back, feet, and my most hateful organ, my
godforsaken uterus. more often than not, i sleep like garbage. this isn't the full list of what's wrong with me and frankly, i don't owe everyone an explanation further than "i'm disabled and that means sometimes i can't do stuff," but now you know.
also up-front, i think alt text is a good thing that people should write when they can. i do not think it is inherently ableist or too big an ask to make "write alt text as often as possible" a social expectation. i think it is good to try to be inclusive. there are also a lot of benefits to alt text even just beyond inclusivity. it makes images searchable. it gives context to people who want to know what a screenshot or a gif of a show or a video game is from. it is a good thing to have. i make a good-faith effort to include it
whenever i can, which is most of the time.
if a person who actually needed an image description asked me for one i hadn't provided, i would oblige.
there's this sentiment floating around that writing alt text is practically effortless, only takes "a few seconds," and could not possibly ever be difficult for anyone to write.
here is a short list of some possible non-malicious barriers to people writing alt text:• chronic pain flare-up
• brain fog from chronic fatigue, dyslexia, autism-related speech stuff or other brain conditions making it difficult to translate image to text
• language barriers
• trying to post something time-sensitive really fast between tasks
• for whatever reason, does not want people finding this image via keyword searches
• for whatever reason, does not want to be heard using speech-to-text to describe the image
• for whatever reason, CANNOT use speech-to-text to describe the image (device malfunction, can't speak due to illness or disability, in a noisy place or a library, etc.)
• demand avoidance/executive dysfunction (really common with adhd/autism!)
• literally just forgot (yes there is a reminder function; but not everyone knows about it yet and you shouldn't just assume that they know about it and haven't turned it on!)
more specifically, when it comes to art, alt text can be really difficult when:• the image is meant to convey something
other than words, or is very visually abstract/non-representational
• trying to verbalize what's going on would kinda be presumptuous or a prescriptive interpretation of a piece of art that is intentionally ambiguous and/or supposed to be open to individual interpretation. sometimes what you are asking people to do is objectively describe a Rorschach test, and uh... i dunno how to explain to you why that doesn't work if you don't already understand, sorry.
• sometimes trying to further describe the image makes the artist feel intensely awkward/uncomfortable for some reason (happens to me a lot with my art-- writing a description of something i'm not even sure i'm successfully conveying in the image makes me really, really uncomfortable sometimes, i see a lot of artists describe similar feelings)
• in the case of using #Alt4Me for their art, the artist may either feel weird about other people trying to interpret their artwork for them, or there's just no way to reasonably expect random strangers to even have context for what you're posting/recognize the characters or understand what's going on if they aren't in your niche/etc.... for example, i can reasonably expect that an iconic fictional character like Mickey Mouse is one someone helping out in that tag is likely to recognize, but there's a much less than 1% chance any of them will know who the hell all the characters in my little no-name visual novel are, and i can't expect them to do the research on that for this volunteer activity that already takes quite a bit of time and effort.
speech-to-text is there. sometimes i do use it to do image descriptions. but for me, the way my brain is wired, writing and speaking feel like they come from entirely different places. trying to write something that isn't conversational with speech-to-text drives me absolutely batty, because the keyboard is a different tool than my voice. when i'm not at a keyboard, i feel a lot more limited in what i'm able to write in a way that is, ironically, kind of difficult for me to verbalize. replying to a text the way i would reply to someone talking to me is easy. writing part of my visual novel script or describing an image is significantly harder. and sometimes my brain is just fogged up, or clogged up, and i
can't make it go. sometimes i stare at a picture and i know what's happening and absolutely zero words come to mind. there's a reason i'm a visual novelist and not just a novelist, okay? i am very often very good at describing things! but sometimes i can't do it to save my fucking life. this is an inconsistent brain behavior, often further muddled by how much pain i'm in at any given moment, how much or how little i have slept (chronic insomnia is a bitch) and/or what level of executive dysfunction i'm at. it is often a roll of the die how capable i am of doing this. sometimes i roll a nat 20 and a perfectly worded image description flows out of me like soft serve into a cone. sometimes i roll a 5 and it comes out real clumsy. sometimes i roll a nat 1, and i can't word picture brain say thing at all.
so there you go. a whole bunch of reasons people may not be able to write alt text, all of them decidedly lacking in malice.
unfortunately alt text has become a moral crusade for some people, and as poisoned as the phrase "virtue signaling" has become, that's... kind of what it is at this point. the opinion of a certain contingent of bluesky (and mastodon, and tumblr) users seems to go like this:
• alt text makes images accessible for visually impaired people.
• therefore, if you don't add alt text, you are excluding visually impaired people.
• alt text is "easy" to write and "only takes a few seconds"
(OR: "i have a disability that makes it hard to write, but i've found a consistent workaround for
myself so i still always do it")
• there are a lot of informational posts about alt text that get passed around bluesky regularly, and a setting you can turn on that will remind you to put alt text on images before you post.
• therefore, "everyone" on bluesky should already know about alt text and know they should be doing it.
• therefore, if you don't include alt text on every single image you post, you're excluding visually impaired people, perhaps intentionally, because you're too lazy and ableist to take a few extra seconds to write some text, a thing that is easy to do for everyone all the time in every situation.
once you end up in this mindset, anyone who doesn't write alt text is an irredeemable monster; therefore, anything you do in the name of more alt text is morally correct. obviously. the "
altometer" lets you get a look at how many images on bluesky have alt text, and a lot of people have latched onto this obsessively and made it their sworn duty to increase this number by whatever means they deem necessary.
sometimes this comes in the form of outright harassment-- someone shows up to call you an asshole for not including alt text. sometimes it's more passive-aggressive or guilt trippy-- "if only you'd put alt text on your beautiful art, maybe i could start sharing your posts" or "nice! where's the alt text though?" or "i wish this had alt text" or "it'd be nice if you cared enough to make this accessible to blind people". a lot of Friendly Reminder™ posts get passed around that assert that it is a "bare minimum expectation" and "common courtesy" and that anyone who does not do it is
lazy, and there is "no excuse" not to do this easy, simple thing.
here are some more direct quotes from some of the alt text cops (usernames redacted on purpose. do not hunt down and harass these people, because A. it might cause rebound harassment against more disabled people, and B. it won't help.):
"if you don't have the spoons to write alt text, you don't have the spoons to post the picture 🤷"
"i tried that route* and got people making excuses not to use the enforced alt text because "waaaah i don't have the spoons to post with alt text" ...then don't post."
*i think someone else in the conversation had suggested just telling people to turn on the alt text reminder thing rather than scolding.
"if you're blaming a lack of spoons, but you had the energy to post, spoons is not the issue. alt text is cantrip level shit."
"if you don't have the spoons to write the alt text don't post the image. lateral ableism isn't cool." (i love the subtle irony of this one, as if it isn't a prime example of lateral ableism to basically tell people "if you have a disability that isn't the one i care about, just don't participate")
"I'm exhausted of reminding people. I'm just blocking you if you can't be fucked. Don't play dumb either. It's 2024. You know wtf ALT text is. Assholes."
"When you upload pics there's a place to edit them and add ALT text before you post. It's a super cool way to let visually impaired social media users know you thought about them for 5 seconds."
"Today of all days to call me ableist. When I literally fell out of my shower, am confined to my chair, can't see anything beyond 5 feet in front of me, can't hear, need my partner to dry me off, wipe my ass, dress and feed me. There is no excuse- EVER- not to use alt text. ESPECIALLY if you're otherwise disabled. You should absolutely 100% know better."
"Can we create a bot that alt text shames people like hi great pic please use alt text next time" followed by a reply from someone else: "Need to have a load of randomised responses for it, sometimes it's calm, sometimes it's at its limit"
"if you don't alt text you don't belong here. we have a culture of inclusitivity. YOU CAN'T SIT WITH US" (no, this one is not a joke, i checked, lmfao, they were saying this in COMPLETE FUCKING SERIOUSNESS)
this all sucks. the quotes above? fucking suck. this is not helpful. this is a bunch of garbage, it stinks, ew, i would not put this in my kitchen trash, i would take it out to the outside bin immediately. i don't think these people are necessarily ableist. but i do think they're ignorant, i do think they have not thought this through, and i do think what they're saying is ableist and shitty as a result of their ignorance. just like you don't have to be an outspoken, committed homophobe to say or do something homophobic, or a frothing-at-the-mouth antifeminist to say something misogynist, you don't have to be an ableist to perpetuate ableism. you don't even have to be abled to say something ableist, example: some of the people in the quotes above there!
sometimes people also manage to make this xenophobic! there are people who speak english as a second language, who post on bluesky primarily in english because it is a website where people primarily use english-- but alt text might not come as easily in english. a korean artist i follow got yelled at for saying they were going to do their alt text in korean because it was hard to do it in english. and i don't even know what to say about that other than what the absolute fuck?
social media is social. it is conversational. a casual post is not an assignment you're turning in. it is a way people socialize. it is mostly temporal and fleeting. "just don't participate at all if you aren't at 100% today" is not a very inclusive thing to say. it is, in fact, pretty exclusionary toward a lot of disabled people.
here's a true, depressing fact: i never feel
good. i can't remember the last time i felt like i was really at 100%. i am mentally ill and physically in pain 24/7/365. "good days" are just... not a thing for me anymore. my baseline is fucked. i had trouble with physical therapy because i can't really imagine
not being in pain, and that fucks so much with your perception of how well you're doing. i have days that are
less bad than others. i am
always running at a deficit of energy. if we want to keep using D&D metaphors here,
fucking everything i do is casting from hit points. and i don't talk about that particular fact very much, because it's fucking depressing. it's demoralizing. for me to voice, and for others to hear. it makes friends not want to ask me to do fun things because in the back of their minds they will know i'm in pain the whole time, or at the very least, i'm going to be in pain afterward, and
they'll be right.if you don't live like this you don't understand. you don't understand what it's like to never be able to do
anything without considering how much it will (not might; WILL) hurt you. to be limited, always, even in leisure activities. to have to play video games in 20-minute on/off sessions with a timer on because otherwise you don't get to enjoy them at all. to not be able to hold books open or close enough to read for very long without pain, or without getting a headache, or without your ailing brain just shitting out on you and refusing to focus. to have to clear your schedule to do something labor-intensive like baking cookies or scrubbing your shower, so you can spend the next day watching netflix in bed with ice packs on everything that hurts. you don't understand how much it wears on you to never, ever, ever experience a waking moment where you are not in any kind of pain. and you don't understand how exhausting it is to have people speculate and prod and ask prying questions, constantly,
just to check and make sure you aren't "making excuses." to have
other people with disabilities look at you and go "well
i'm disabled and
i can do it, so you have no excuse." you don't understand what it's like to have doctor after doctor shrug at you, and to have everyone around you demand a specific diagnosis that you've been trying to pry out of medical professionals for years before they'll believe that anything is wrong with you.
it is god. damn. exhausting. the frustration, the grief, the anxiety about Explaining It All to everyone new you meet. having to give everyone the primer: a lot of things are wrong with me, and if i don't respond to your texts or come to your party or i cancel plans a lot, it's not because i hate you, it's because
my body hates me. the inevitable poverty, if you aren't lucky and privileged enough to escape it. the feeling of being a burden, because living independently is impossible. again, i don't bring it up much because i tend to spiral when i do. one of my coping strategies is perpetual distraction. it's why i'm never without my ear buds and a playlist full of podcasts.
here's a little story about ableism: one of my conditions is PCOS-- polycystic ovarian syndrome. it does a really long list of shitty stuff to you, but its favorite thing to do is give you "should i go to the hospital?" level period cramps. many times, i've had to google "appendicitis symptoms" again to try and suss out whether i should be at the ER. before they were
mostly controlled with medication, my period cramps were so bad that i would be stuck in bed, crying my eyes out, for most of a day out of every month. when i would struggle to school the next day, still in terrible pain but just functional enough to walk and
sort of pay attention in class, gym teachers would tell me "if you're well enough to be at school, you're well enough to run the mile." if i wanted out, i needed a doctor's note. i didn't have access to a doctor at the time-- this was in middle/high school in the 2000s, years before Obamacare made that ever so slightly more accessible-- so either i had to suffer, or my grades did.
what i can or can't do in any given moment is a calculation based on several factors. it's really variable day-to-day, hour-to-hour, and it's never just about one thing, and other people can't do that calculation for me. but i sure have watched a lot of people try.
when i see some shit like "if you can't write alt text, don't post," what i hear in my mind is my fucking gym teacher. and no, it's not the same situation. it's not the same size of an ask. it is definitely worse to make someone in severe pain run a mile under threat of detention or bad grades. it is definitely harder for me to do that than it is for me to write alt text. but the underlying twisted expectations are pretty much the same. it's unfair in the same way.
if you can do x, why can't you do y?
it's just a little extra effort.this is how the ableds get you. many small things. the individual asks are small, and not unreasonable. but they don't consider the accumulation, or the way disability can fluctuate day-to-day. so they'll assume you're just being dramatic or
"using your disability as an excuse". that's always a fun one. how dare any of us need an excuse based on our disability.
you ever hear the phrase, "death by a thousand cuts?"
you ever hear the one about the snowflake who swore up and down it had
nothing to do with the blizzard? or the camel that was just making excuses about not being able to carry one little extra piece of straw?
my first therapist (ditched him after a month; hope he found something else to do) explained to me very helpfully that a coffee shop job would be sooooooo easy with severe wrist and shoulder pain. not that difficult to pick up a cup or pull a lever. that's easy when you're in pain. and there definitely wouldn't be any cumulative stress from doing it hundreds of times a day.
bullshit like this worms its way into your brain. you hear it over and over, from people you like, from people you trust, from people with authority over you, and even when you know they're wrong, you can quite easily learn to gaslight yourself into thinking you're fine as long as the pain isn't
too bad. i'm not crying. i haven't vomited or collapsed, so this is bearable. this isn't the worst it's ever been. other people have it
much worse and still do things. so i should just keep pushing forward. i'm
always in pain, so it doesn't count until i'm in so much pain i can't move anymore.
this is part of how i landed in physical therapy, more than once. i wasn't broken enough. not until i was so broken it was desperate. (this is also how government disability assistance and health insurance treats you, most of the time. hahahaha. scream)
invisible disability inevitably leads to questioning, and incredulity, and guilt trips from others. if i sound too defensive here, it's because i am. because the little indignities and the doubting looks and the prodding questions add up into trauma. i have spent my entire life being told that i'm "just making excuses". some of my clearest childhood memories are of being accused of faking the stomach aches my anxiety disorder gave me. of being asked "are you sure you don't feel well, or do you just not want to be in math class"? and shit like that. i cannot describe to you how scared i am, every time
i have to make an accessibility-related ask, that i will be sneered at and not be believed (this is why i am sympathetic to the frustration of visually impaired people who don't want to have to ask for alt text-- i get it, i really do, and it sucks for everyone here). i spent 2 years fighting my old workplace for proper disability accommodations, until i was so broken i had to quit anyway shortly after i got them. so i have a bit of a chip on my shoulder, and i'm kind of always watching the horizon.
i think the reason this bothers me so much is that it really is a microcosm of the downright pathological need of the abled to means-test fucking
everything, just to make sure you aren't "getting away with being lazy". it's their #1 brainworm. the worst thing they can think of isn't a disabled person falling through the huge holes in the government safety net, it's a "lazy" person "getting out of work" by "faking a disability." if you're not doing what the ableds want you to do, you have to have a really good, solid reason, and it has to be a good reason by standards that
they can understand. it can't be anything that looks like "laziness" to them, like executive dysfunction or chronic pain. you have to be an amputee or something, and even then, sometimes they'll still be like, "well, let's try to figure out what jobs you can do with no legs and CPTSD" or whatever. because the #1 thing we have to avoid is not unnecessary human suffering, it's
laziness. the expectation is that you should and must bear whatever you technically can without physically collapsing, no matter how miserable it makes you, no matter how much of your life it consumes, and you should only get a break when you've either earned enough to retire, or you literally can't do anything that makes money. this expectation is also deeply unfair to abled people. nobody should have to work as hard as most of us do just to pay the bills. no one should have their entire life consumed by work almost every day. but because this is what is expected of the abled, many of them seem to see disabled people getting accommodations at work or disability pay as "getting out of things," as a lucky break, as getting to have it "easy," as if the Americans With Disabilities Act came into existence without the loud and sustained and painful protest of the disabled, without them
literally crawling up the steps of the capitol to shame politicians into doing the bare minimum. as if ableist discrimination isn't one of the most common forms of discrimination in the workplace. as if being able to stand for 8 hours a day and lift 50 pounds aren't still in almost every job description for almost every job that doesn't require a degree. jesus fucking christ.
it's also an attitude fueled by and fed back into "inspiration porn" stories about disabled people who "don't let their disabilities hold them back," written mostly, i think, for the benefit of abled people who do not want to believe that their lives could ever be irreparably changed by an accident or the emergence of a chronic condition. it's the scourge of the phrase "differently abled," which i've always hated. it's important for abled people to understand that disability is not condemnation to a pitiable life of constant misery. it's also important for "disabled" to actually retain its meaning. i am disabled. there are things i can't do. perseverance and dedication aren't meaningless, but no matter how dedicated i am, i will never be able to do a 12-hour charity gaming stream; my hands will give out. i will never be able to consistently work 40-hour weeks; my body and mind
will fall apart under the stress. it is not
"letting my disability hold me back" when i say that these things are not possible. there is no combination of positive thinking, re-framing, strategizing, and accommodation that will make me as functional as a healthy person without any mental illnesses. there are no buff spells that can completely counter my natural debuffs. i've accepted this. others seem to struggle with it.
simply put, i think a lot of the ableism i face is rooted in abled people not wanting to believe that what's happened to me could happen to them. if i'm faking, or exaggerating, or i did something wrong and it's my fault, that means they're safe.
it's the same reason they will then switch to asking if i've been to the doctor, or tried yoga, or tried whatever fucking joyless cardboard-eating diet they've heard about that supposedly cures chronic pain. simple acceptance of reality-- that the human body can and will betray you, in ways that are terrible, unfair, and often random-- is too scary. if you're reading this and you aren't disabled in some way, hey, guess what.
you will be. unless you die instantly in some kind of accident before you age enough to slow down,
you will become disabled in some way. the fragile meat robot you are piloting will betray you.
this Alt Text Crusader bullshit is also built on the assumption that being visually impaired is inherently a sad state to live in and that to be blind is to fundamentally "miss out". i'm yelling and pointing again to
Against Access by John Lee Clark, an essay by a DeafBlind person that changed my whole perspective on how to approach alt text (keep it short and sweet rather than getting verbose). i obviously can't speak personally to this. there is no blanket solution. visual impairment is as diverse an experience as anything. i've tried to make a habit, always, of listening to what other disabled people say, and he isn't the only person i've seen voice these feelings-- that it's tiresome when sighted people assume their job, when writing alt text, is to painstakingly describe every single detail and get as close to 1:1 image-to-text as they can. in reality, alt text is often a creative act, something more akin to translation and localization of media from one language to another.
when i made a thread about this a while back on bluesky, someone asked, "how do i tell the difference between disabled people who legitimately can't write alt text, and people who are just lazy?" and here's my answer. and this is also my answer to "how do i tell who's faking a disability" in general: most of the time,
you can't, and you need to accept that. you have to drop this fucking disability cop stuff. it's not helpful. you are not and cannot be the arbiter of who is and is not disabled enough to deserve to post a selfie without alt text and not get fucking yelled at. if you are always trying to sniff out who's "just being lazy",
all you are doing is perpetuating the very ableism you claim to hate.
you just have to trust people. you just have to give them the benefit of the doubt. you have to think real hard before you bust out words laden with as much presumption as
lazy or
deserving or
easy. because the cost of believing someone who says "this is hard for me" and maybe getting duped is preferable to the cost of guilt-tripping and ostracizing actual disabled people. you're just going to have to
act in good faith. and i know that's a foreign concept to a lot of people with social media brainworms, but i highly suggest trying it. you'll be shocked at how much less angry you are when you don't immediately look for the most malicious interpretation of every single person's actions. the world feels a little less cruel when you aren't reading in cruelty that isn't there.
when you piss in someone's mentions over this, you could be making some really weird assumptions, including but not limited to:• that they don't have any disabilities you don't know about
• that you are owed a disclosure and/or full explanation of any disabilities they have
• that any disabilities they do have are all 100% known to
them (ex. lots of autistic/adhd people are undiagnosed and lots of us struggle with image descriptions!)
• that they have never been confronted about this before by anyone (psst-- it's very possible you're needling someone who has already been harassed about this enough!)
• that perfect accessibility for everything, to everyone, is a realistic goal we can meet by beating up on people about it, rather than an ideal we should strive for while understanding there can, will, and sometimes must be exceptions
i see a lot of people make passive-aggressive (or just plain aggressive) demands for alt text, get rightfully rebuffed for being shitty about it, and then go "i wasn't ATTACKING them! i was just ASKING for them to please MAKE THEIR POSTS ACCESSIBLE TO EVERYONE." it's crybully bullshit. it's social justice language scrunched up and loaded into a BB gun so they can take potshots at people for fun, and that
sucks. you are not actually prioritizing the needs of visually impaired people; you are seeking acceptable targets for your own vindictive, ego-padding behavior.
incidentally, if you want an actual target for
productive criticism, maybe consult with the companies that make screen reader software, because a lot of screen reader software
sucks so bad it doesn't even read basic punctuation! if you really, truly care about accessibility, there are systemic problems that need solving. trashing randos on bluesky isn't going to change the world.
if you want to share something but it doesn't have alt text, "may i add alt text to this post?" is pretty non-confrontational, does not assume ignorance, and doesn't imply any kind of accusation or guilt. if they don't know what alt text is, you've left the ball in their court for them to follow up and ask you, or look it up themselves. if you
must approach people about this, try it this way. assume
nothing other than good faith. they might still feel embarrassed about not knowing. some people might get defensive and/or hostile, still, but at least at that point you aren't the one being a jerk.
sometimes disabilities conflict. to put the onus of maintaining accessibility on disabled people themselves and to expect us to all be perfect at it is some ass-backwards shit. when you do this, you're approaching random strangers with hostility and demands that you should reserve for institutional oppressors. i am not goddamn walgreens making work training videos that don't have any captions. i am not a government organization with a professional social media manager posting vital infographics about storm shelter locations and leaving off alt text. i am just some lady, with physical and psychological limitations on what i'm capable of doing in a day, and when you come into my mentions and shriek at me for not alt texting a photo of my lunch or a drawing i'm currently not capable of verbalizing, and
very especially if YOU AREN'T EVEN VISUALLY IMPAIRED, you are being a weird asshole. you cannot call yourself a disability ally while shitting on disabled people
for things that they don't do as a result of being disabled. you cannot be a disability ally when you automatically assume "laziness" based on circumstantial evidence. stop trying to means-test whether people with other disabilities deserve to be harassed and/or ostracized. stop coming after us, brandishing your dowsing rods, trying to divine whether or not we're
just lazy. for
fuck's sake. we get enough of that already. re-arrange your priorities.
(addendum: if you've read all this and you say some shit like
"wow, you really wrote this whole essay but writing a few words of alt text sometimes is too hard for you? just say you hate blind people lol",
here is a link to the Guinness World Records application form. might i suggest applying for titles such as: Worst-Faith Reader, #1 Point-Misser, or perhaps Most Willful Misinterpreter.)
(fyi, this entry was edited for more clarity/with more thoughts on 7/10/2025)![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
