Twitter has taken a step ahead, and the service is made accessible to visually impaired users as well, as it launches support for alternative texts for accompanying images across Android and iOS apps.
This means that image descriptions would be available to the screen readers, as per a report dated March 27, 2016.
Not only the 320 million monthly active users can use this service, but even developers and publishers can use it. The release symbolizes that Twitter is supporting the developer community.
Last year at the Flight conference, Jack Dorsey, the CEO apologized publicly for the strained relation between developers and company and invited them to submit feedback and suggestions using hashtag #HelloWorld.
Twitter alt tags:
When the feature is enabled through the accessibility settings of Twitter, the thumbnail of the image that is tweeted would contain an ‘add description’ option, and when tapped, a dialogue box is opened up. Here, a description of around 420 characters can be added.
In 2006, when Twitter used to be a text-only service, the content was accessible easily to people who were visually impaired.
Over the years, the platform is extended for supporting various media, but the developers and users aren’t provided the tools for providing alternative text to tweets and images, says the company.
For emphasizing on why this update is essential for developers, Twitter gave an explanation that the community has tried solving this problem before too. In the year 2014,
How it works:
Twitter created a work around for allowing Easy Chirp users to post long and short descriptions of images.
Then, there was an Alt text Bot, through which people were allowed to mention @alt_text_bot in retweet or tweet with an attached image for receiving a reply that contains a text description.
This option of adding alt text is available only on Android and iOS apps, but still, users on the web would be able to read this through their application.
