Twitter has deployed a new, improved and simplified “ALT” badge for all images that Twitter users embed in their tweets. These badges will provide a description of the picture. This accessibility feature should enable all users to see additional or alternative text descriptions and enhance accessibility.
Twitter has confirmed that the ALT badge and improved image descriptions are now available globally. The company released a tweet to confirm the global availability of the feature. Images with text descriptions will receive a badge with “ALT” written on them. Clicking or tapping the badge will reveal a description of the picture.
Notably, Twitter does not deploy any artificial intelligence or image processing algorithms to compile descriptions of images embedded by users. Instead, it is the user’s responsibility to write a description for the images they upload.
As promised, the ALT badge and exposed image descriptions go global today.
Over the past month, we fixed bugs and gathered feedback from the limited release group. We’re ready. You’re ready. Let’s describe our images! Here’s how: https://t.co/bkJmhRpZPg https://t.co/ep1ireBJGt
— Twitter Accessibility (@TwitterA11y) April 7, 2022
- Twitter has a guide for this. As you can see, the process is fairly simple:
- After uploading an image to Twitter, select Add description below the image;
- Enter a description for the image in the text box. The number of characters is in the corners of the box, you have 1000 characters available;
- Click Save, at this point, an ALT badge will appear in the corner of the image;
If someone clicks on the ALT badge, the description should appear on the screen. Twitter has been testing the feature for about a month. The Weibo network teased the feature last month. At that time, it was possible to display Twitter’s alt-text description in the stream. Twitter appears to have abandoned this type of visibility in favor of the ALT badge. In other words, those interested in getting more picture information will have to click on the ALT badge to view the same information.