Guillem Leon

I have encountered more image descriptions on Mastodon in 24 hours than I have in Twitter in a couple of years. Seriously. I'm not exaggerating.
As a blind person, this means a lot to me. If you read this and you describe your images, thank you so, so, so much on behalf of all of us. If you don't, now you know you'll be helping random Internet strangers make sense of your posts by typing in a few more words than usual.

1+
Lien Rag

@guilevi

Hi.
Actually I don't put description on the images I toot there, usually because they're just funny ones and it stops being funny if it has to be described/explained so the extra work seems pointless to me.

Would you consider that acceptable ? When do you believe it is important to describe images ?

1+
wintery mx. :ice_pride:

@lienrag It is not acceptable to not describe images of jokes. It excludes people.

This is a general problem: Abled people don't expect disabled people to participate in jokes and memes and shitposts, but we do. We don't want to be excluded from fun stuff our friends/peers are doing.

It doesn't ruin the joke to explain it; anyone who doesn't need/want to look at the description won't.

But even if it did, people matter more than jokes.
@guilevi

1+
The gentle klingon

@bright_helpings

> people matter more than jokes

This. ☝️

@lienrag @guilevi

1+
KAOS

@shahaan @bright_helpings @lienrag @guilevi Yep. Good moment to point it out again. <3

1
Lien Rag
Follow

@KAOS @shahaan @bright_helpings @guilevi

So, everytime you post a joke you take the time to translate it to Chinese, Arabic, Russian,.... in order to be sure to include everyone ?

· · Sengi · 6 · 0 · 2
Hypolite Petovan
@shahaan @bright_helpings @lienrag @guilevi @KAOS As far as I know Chinese, Arabic and Russian aren't disabilities and as such it is a very poor taste comparison.
1+
Jonathan Lamothe
@hypolite @lienrag It's also worth noting that online translation services exist and are somewhat decent. There's a reason we use photos in captchas.
0
Ingo Lantschner
@hypolite @guilevi @shahaan @bright_helpings @lienrag @KAOS This sounds like a moral lecture from someone who has run out of arguments. As we all know, there are jokes that do not translate well, if at all, into other languages. There is a word joke and also a "picture joke" - even if this term is not familiar. Musicians entertain themselves with funny melodies - which I don't even begin to understand. I would never think of accusing them of excluding me. To accuse someone of excluding others because their messages are not universally transferable is nonsensical and would ultimately lead to an impoverishment of all cultures.

That said, I would like to see alt-text added to images that are difficult to describe. Even at the risk of the joke not being understood.
1
*
Hypolite Petovan
@ilanti Are you seriously suggesting that me calling someone out for equating disability with non-Latin scripts sounds like I'm running out of arguments?

I hope you ran your comment by one of your many visually-impaired friends because otherwise it would sound pretty fucking privileged.
1
Ingo Lantschner
@hypolite @Hypolite Petovan What I'm saying is that you don't make arguments, but moralise and judge: "your jokes aren't that funny", "your comparisons show bad taste", "your comments sound privileged" are, at least in my understanding, not arguments, but rather speeches of a priest or a governess. I have no problem with priests and governesses - they are honourable professions - but I am surprised to find them in this discussion, and this after you have accused others of having no arguments. Does that really fit together?

But maybe we have a misunderstanding of language or culture here. Because in the end we come to the same conclusion that alt-texts are helpful even for "funny pictures".

Perhaps I should clarify what an argument is in my sense:

just remember that just because a joke loses all its fun to you if it is explained, that does not mean others will all feel the same. We've gotten used to finding descriptions of visual jokes sufficiently amusing;
(copied from the above comment by @Mayana)

And here we see clearly what are the advantaged of an argument: it picks up the discussant, addresses his arguments and enables him to change his point of view. Telling him that his jokes are not funny will not achieve that.
1
Hypolite Petovan
@ilanti I do moralize and judge because it is a very moral issue, there's no logical point to make here. When somebody say "Please add image descriptions so that visually-impaired people can also enjoy your funny pictures" and someone is essentially like "Nah", you know there's no logical argument that will get through them, they purposefully chose to publicly exclude disabled people, which is an extremely (im)moral position.

Word to the wise, next time you actually agree with someone, please don't comment on their tone publicly. You don't have to like it, but it won't do anyone any favor to comment on it.
1
Ingo Lantschner
@hypolite @Hypolite Petovan It's not about tone. Your message and the one I quoted send completely different messages:

Your pictures may be not that funny if you can't describe them

vs.

Please consider describing them anyway, because blind people may have a different perspective than you have.

Even without the "please", the second message would be more substantial, more communicative and less arogant than the first.

It is now up to you to decide how you want to communicate further. For my part, I would like you to refrain from unsolicited "wise advice", for example.
1
Hypolite Petovan
@ilanti And now you can go fuck yourself.

You apparently haven’t picking on the subtle hint I wasn’t interested talking about this with you anymore, but this should clear any lingering misunderstanding.
1
Ingo Lantschner
@hypolite Interesting ... that a person who presents himself as so morally superior is so quick to fly into a rage.
0
PJ Coffey

@hypolite @shahaan @bright_helpings @lienrag @guilevi @KAOS

I'm just going to go ahead and block them because I can spot a concern troll at over 50,000 metres.

I post descriptions on my memes because the idea of people not getting my joke makes me sad.

Oh, and to answer the point. I'll post in the language of my audience. And usually that's English.

0
Firestarter_OL

@lienrag
This isn't neccesary. There are translators like DeepL and Google Translator, which can translate pretty accurately.
@KAOS @shahaan @bright_helpings @guilevi

0
🐂

@lienrag daaaamn this thread is so old, how have you not grown as a person in the 17+ months since May 11th 2021 lmao

0
John Chivall

@lienrag @KAOS @shahaan @bright_helpings @guilevi They can run the text in the image description through translate. If you don't bother describing the image at all then they don't have that option, and you've excluded a whole bunch of people that you could have included with just the tiniest bit of effort.

And image descriptions can be really funny in their own right and add to the joke, if you do them well

0
Supertapani

@lienrag @KAOS @shahaan @bright_helpings @guilevi

Nyt meni vänkäämiseksi.

Saavutettavuus kaikille on täällä perusperiaate. Näitä kaikkia ryhmiä on niin monia, että jokaisen tarpeita ei aina voi erikseen miettiä.

Yhteisönormit, kuten Alt-Teksti, on tältä pohjalta kehittyneet vuosien aikana.

Näitä normeja ei tarvitse erikseen selittää ja perustella. Ne voi hyväksyä vaikka niitä kaikkia ei ymmärräkään.

0
OpenDNA⚙️

@lienrag Browser translator can handle translate text but not images.

0
Sign in to participate in the conversation
Mastodon

Instance généraliste majoritairement francophone.

Trending now

Resources

Developers

What is Mastodon?

mastodon.tedomum.net

More…

v3.5.5 · Privacy policy