Describing images for noobs
Posted on 2 June 2023
So you want to post an image on the Fediverse, but you're not quite sure how to describe it. Or maybe you just want to help your screenreader-using friends and friends with very low bandwidth. Here's some tips for describing images!
Describe the important things first
If you describe the important things first, then you'll be able to tackle other things later. If you have a portrait, describe the person in the portrait first (and apply a content warning for eye contact, if any!) and then briefly describe the background. Describing too much can be as painful as describing too little, except if there are many important things all key to the understanding of the photo. If you have a landscape photo, however, the big picture might be more important so you can reduce all the focal points (e.g. rainy sky, big mountains, urban landscape) into small sentence parts in the description.
Don't overdescribe
If you describe too much, it will be painful to get through for everyone. You don't want to be like the author of the book that you must read before driving Bessie in Amphibia:
It was an especially cold morning the day Bessie was brought into this world. The leaves had just changed color. Now I shall describe these leaves to you in great detail. Some leaves were green with flecks of yellow in them…
Don't be that person unless nessescary, and keep your descriptions short, but not far too short.
Don't underdescribe
You have to find a good middle ground. A description like the one above is tedious and annoying. A description too short is also annoying, but much more so than a long one. If you underdescribe, you're not properly describing the image at hand and this will not make it so that people that cannot see the image can rely on the alt text for context. Seriously, I have seen descriptions like this:
Meme
Do not be that person, ever. A lacking description is much worse than no description.
Don't use the OCR feature
Unless scanning long paragraphs of text, don't use OCR. It will likely give you a bad description that won't help people who rely on the description. Hand write your description, or if you use OCR, edit it heavily so that it can be understood.
Pretend you can't see the image
If the image suddenly gets deleted, and only the alt text is left, could you rely on the alt text for context? If not, make sure you can.
Add in "extras" to the description
If the image is a meme, you can explain the punchline in the description, and/or explain allusions in the image. You can also provide context in the description, which helps people understand the image. But keep it related and actually describe the image!
Practice!
Now we've gone over the basics, so let's practice with an image!
Think of how you would describe this image, and possibly write it down somewhere. Remember the rules referenced above, and try your best! Once you're done, or maybe you just want to see, here's my description of it:
A photo of a Siamese cat sitting happily on some pastel yellow painted bricks taken at sunset. There's a deep brown colored fence with a fence gate in the background, as well as some brown leaves on a vine and what appears to be a fake spruce tree.
Details like a dead bush near the fence aren't really important to the photo, so I omitted them. But the deep, hearty brown of the wood fence contributes to the atmosphere, so I added it to the description. You can, of course, make a longer description, but this is a good length to start with. Remember to describe your images well and have a great day! Bye for now.