How to write an image description for Social Media

Please read complete article enclosed in the link.

Extremely informative writing for those of us who share our work on different Social media platforms.
Found on Mastodon post by
https://toot.cat/@StephanieZvan/109564832289331290

By: Alex Chen | Published in UX Collective

I wrote this how-to guide with the immensely helpful counsel and insights from Bex Leon and Robin Fanning, as well as through an online survey of Blind / low vision / visually impaired people.

What is an image description?
An image description is a written caption that describes the essential information in an image.
Image descriptions can define photos, graphics, gifs, and video — basically anything containing visual information. Providing descriptions for imagery and video are required as part of WCAG 2.1 (for digital ADA compliance).
It’s sometimes referred to as alt text since the alt attribute is a common place to store them.
While alt text and image descriptions are sometimes used synonymously, they’re not actually the same thing. Alt text refers to the text specifically added to the alt attribute, and is often short and brief. Image descriptions can be found in the alt text, caption, or body of the webpage and are often more detailed. For more about alt text and image descriptions, check out @higher_priestess on instagram.

Additionally, image descriptions are a gesture of care and an essential part of accessibility. Without them, content would be completely unavailable to Blind/low vision folks. By writing image descriptions, we show support of cross-disability solidarity and cross-movement solidarity.

How to write a good image description

Object-action-context
Something that I learned from talking to Bex is that there is a storytelling aspect to writing descriptions. It doesn’t necessarily make sense to go from left to right describe everything in an image because that might lose the central message or create a disorienting feeling. For that reason, I came up with a framework that I recommend called object-action-context.
The object is the main focus. The action describes what’s happening, usually what the object is doing. The context describes the surrounding environment.
I recommend this format because it keeps the description objective, concise, and descriptive.

It should be objective so that people using the description can form their own opinions about what the image means. It should be concise so that it doesn’t take too long for people to absorb all the content, especially if there are multiple images. And it should be descriptive enough that it describes all the essential aspects of the image.