Twitter has made its ALT badge available globally and it brings in improved image descriptions to the platform. This accessibility feature makes alt text descriptions more prominent for all users. Images you see on the platform, if they feature a badge that reads ‘ALT’, will pull up the description of the image when clicked on.
Twitter had announced the ALT feature last month and it is finally rolling out globally.
“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!,” Twitter posted from its Accessibility account.
Twitter has also shared step-by-step instructions regarding how to add image descriptions in a blog post. Once you upload an image to a tweet, you need to Add a description below the image in the text box. There is a 1,000-character limit for the image description. Once this is done and you hit ‘Save’, the ALT badge is going to appear on the left bottom corner of the image when posted. Anyone clicking on this ALT badge will be able to see the description show as a pop-up on the screen.
Before Twitter rolled out this ALT badge, users only had access to alt text descriptions for images if they were using screen readers. While Twitter did introduce image descriptions in 2016, they were hard to find and difficult to add. The company created a dedicated accessibility team in late 2020 and since then has been working on improving accessibility features on the platform.
While we wait for an edit button to appear, or not, Twitter has quietly changed the way deleted tweets are preserved. As pointed out by Kevin Marks, Twitter has changed its embedded javascript so as “the text of deleted tweets is no longer visible in embeds on outside websites”.
So, what does this mean?
If an external website has embedded one of your tweets on their site, even if you delete that tweet from Twitter, it would still be visible on the external website. Now, with this change in the javascript, the deleted tweet will show up as a blank white box on the external website.
While this not appear to very significant a change, it does have important implications. Tweets from celebrities, politicians, etc., are often embedded in stories on other websites and they have served as public records of what they’ve said/posted even if they chose to delete it. Now, if those embedded tweets are deleted, they will disappear from these stories too, essentially wiping them off record. The only way to save them now are going to be screenshots.
Does it matter? Yes, it does because it wipes off records that matter in certain important cases. As Endgadget points out, there is a way to view the text by disabling javascript on the browser, but this is not something most people will know how to do even if they knew it was possible. Twitter product manager Eleanor Harding told Marks the change was made “to better respect when people have chosen to delete their Tweets.”
This change goes against what former CEO Jack Dorsey had said in 2018 while speaking about the edit button. Dorsey was against the introduction of the edit button because it can “erode Twitter’s ability to function as a public record”. “It’s really critical that we preserve that,” he said at the time.
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