Twitter supports alternative text for images sent via app

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Thursday, 31 March 2016 14:54pm

Twitter has announced that images tweeted from its iOS and Android apps can now include alternative text, ensuring that users of assistive technologies such as screen readers can understand the nature of the visual content.

Two screen shots of the composer for Twitter on iOS. The first showing the new "Add description" button overlayed on an image thumbnail in the composer, and the second showing the composition of alt text for an image. Image credit: Twitter

Twitter stated in its accessibility blog post that “…photos have been at the centre of some of the biggest moments on Twitter. As a core part of the Twitter experience, it’s important that images shared on our platform are accessible to everyone, including those who are visually impaired.”

To enable this feature, users of the iOS or Android app need to go to the ‘compose image descriptions’ option in the Twitter app’s accessibility settings. Once enabled, users will have an ‘add description’ button which will allow the addition of alternative text.

The accessibility of Twitter has improved notably in recent years due to the creation of an internal accessibility team. Twitter is a commonly used tool for people to discuss web accessibility issues as noted by the popular #a11y hashtag.

Additional information on the accessibility of Twitter can be found in the recently updated Twitter accessibility resource on the Media Access Australia a website.


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