On Thursday, Twitter revealed two accessibility features – ALT badge and improved exposed image descriptions, which will also be available globally. The company first announced the changes last month. However, then, it was in the testing phase.
The new accessibility features will make alt descriptions prominent to all users. Additionally, tweet images consisting of a text description will receive an ‘ALT’ badge. Plus, clicking on the badge will bring up the image description.
Moreover, Twitter confessed that the latest accessibility features were getting fixed for bugs over the past month. In addition, the company revealed that it was also “gathering feedback from the limited release group.”
Furthermore, Twitter first introduced image descriptions on the platform in 2016. However, only people with screen readers could read alt text descriptions at that time. So, the latest addition of these fantastic new accessibility features to Twitter is significant. Firstly, it helps people in learning how to write alt texts. Secondly, it will significantly enhance the user experience of people with vision disabilities.
Apart from an announcement, Twitter even provided users with a step-by-step guide on applying these new accessibility features. Here are the steps –
- Select “Add description” underneath the image you have uploaded. A text box will appear.
- Enter the image’s description in the box. Note: The text should contain only 1000 characters. (You can view the character count in the corner of the box.)
- Click “Save.”
- After saving the image, an ALT badge will appear in the corner.
- After tweeting the post, your follower will see the image description after clicking on the ALT badge.
