“Adding image descriptions allows people who are blind, have low vision, use assistive tech, live in low-bandwidth areas, or have a cognitive disability, to fully contribute on Twitter.”
Twitter has said it will be releasing a new feature on its platform for users in April.
The feature is an accessibility feature that enables alt text descriptions.
With this, users would be able to have descriptions of images.
Twitter has said that the feature would be useful and significantly prominent.
On an image, it would show the badge alt.
And when the badge is clicked on, it shows the image’s description.
Twitter has said that it will launch the feature and roll it globally at the beginning of April.
However, it would be testing the feature on some users for a month.
Only 3 per cent of people would get access to the feature before it is officially released online.
Twitter said in its blog post that the feature had been a long time coming.
And it wasn’t popular on its platform even though it was similar to a feature released in 2016.
This is because Twitter didn’t have a committed accessibility team for the past few years.
It was until 2020 when it introduced the team.
Employees of the brand volunteered to work on the changes alongside their job.
And since its creation, much more accessibility features have been launched.
Some of them include the voice tweet, videos and others.
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More about Twitter’s accessibility feature.
Many people might skip and not notice the feature as they aren’t familiar with it.
Twitter is making an effort in solving this problem. Its threat mentioned that the accessibility team is working on a reminder for image description.
Twitter also explained in its tweet why the feature is important.
Adding a feature like this would help those who are blind, live in bandwidth areas, etc.,
Another advantage of having the feature is that such tweets spread faster than others.
Implication for you reading
If you are reading this, you are probably awaiting testing the feature.
This has been one of the looked forward functionality on the microblogging platform.
Twitter’s accessibility feature will be available to all users starting from March.
For the alt reminder, Twitter has promised to share more updates.
and then