Image descriptions on text based posts

Content creators! That’s all of you reading/watching this post! And I’m especially talking to media and brands here.

I can’t read your text based images – and nor can many other disabled people. In this video I talk about how Ichthyosis affects my eyes.

Text based posts are screen shots from news articles, tweets, notes, memes, infographics etc

Image descriptions aren’t only for photo/picture based posts on social media. They’re for text based posts too.

Please, please, PLEASE copy and paste the text from your text based post in the main social media caption (on Instagram or Facebook), so disabled people can read it! Without doing so, it’s not accessible – especially for people who use screen readers, and also for people who can’t read small print or have light sensitivity (like me).

Remember to copy the text from the source before you post a screen shot on social media. And use a character recognition tool like www.onlineocr.net if you don’t have the original text – you can upload the screen shot image and it spits out the text for you to copy into the social media post’s caption.

This needs to be done for all text based posts – not just when we request it. (And on image descriptions on all picture based posts, too.)

Factor doing image descriptions into your content creation process!

1. Write or source your text that you want to share to social media.
2. Copy the text (save it somewhere if you need).
3. Create your meme or text based post.
4. Upload it to Instagram.
5. Paste the text you’ve copied (and extend it into the comments if you have too much text for Instagram).
6. Finish writing your social media post’s caption, proof read edit.
7. Post!

Yes, providing accessibility takes a little more time, but constantly asking for access to be provided is incredibly time consuming for disabled people. Thanks for your allyship.

Save and share this post for future reference. I always demonstrate accessibility on my Instagram and Facebook posts – scroll back to see how it’s done, and implement it yourselves – no matter how big or small your following is, accessibility is for everyone.
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Video: a woman with a red face and dark curly hair tied back, talking to camera. She’s wearing a colourful dress and a brooch that’s Hello Kitty floating on a red apple. A white wall is behind her. Captions are on the screen.

Transcript: Something I don’t talk a lot about is my eyes. I have Ichthyosis and part of that means that my eyes are very sensitive to light. My lower lids don’t retold the tears because they’re not elastic enough. And the constant dryness and tears that stream from my eyes mean that I have trouble often keeping them open and seeing things. So when I asked for image descriptions, particularly image descriptions for text based images, that is screenshots of text or means, I’m asking for the wider disability community and I’m also asking for me, it’s increasingly harder to read content that is text based and I would love it if you could copy and paste your text and put it in the caption of your Instagram posts or Facebook posts.

If this has helped you, you can buy me a drink! Go to CarlyFindlay.com.au/support-me to do so. Thanks!