Creating Accessible Social Media and Marketing

December 23, 2022

{Raine Lapaire] Hello everyone, and welcome to this session on Accessible Social Media and Digital Marketing.

So, to help minimize distractions, please keep your microphone muted for the duration of the panel discussion until we open it up for questions and we get into the hands-on practice.
If you are speaking, please keep background noise to a minimum. Please use the chat for questions and other important messages rather than a water cooler. Excessive chat notifications can be quite disruptive for many participants, especially those with who are using screen readers.

This webinar will be using the built-in zoom captions. Megan, if you don't mind turning those on, that would be great. Any slides from today's presentation will be posted on AccessibleLibraries.ca including any links. And please note that this webinar will be live streamed to the AccessibleLibraries.ca YouTube channel and will be recorded. The recording and live stream will be stopped prior to the questions portion of the webinar and the hands-on practice.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to mention that our presenters today come from across this land. Living and working in what we now know as Canada. We represent and affirm the inherent and treaty rights of all Indigenous peoples and will continue to honour the commitments to self-determination and sovereignty we have made to Indigenous Nations and Peoples. We respectfully ask for you all to take a moment to acknowledge the lands on which you reside.

My name is Riane Lapaire. I am your moderator for today. I am the braille and accessibility testing coordinator at the National Network for Equitable Library Service and one of the project team members of the AccessibleLibraries.ca and Public Library, wait... Public Library Accessibility Resource Center Project.

We'll get the panellists to quickly introduce themselves as well. Karen McKay.

[Karen McKay ] Hi everyone, I'm Karen McKay. I'm the communication manager at CELA.

[Raine] Karen Chidiak? Karen, you're muted.

[Karen Chidiak] Of course. Hello everyone, I'm Karen Chidiak from the Edmonton Public Library. I am the communications and marketing manager.

[Riane] Thank you. Ka.

[Ka Li] Hi, I'm Ka Li. I'm an accessibility analyst at NNELS.

[Riane] Simon.

[Simon Jaeger] Hi, I'm Simon. I'm also an accessibility analyst at NNELS.

[Riane] And Patrick.

[Patrick Bouchard] I'm Patrick. I am I'm Patrick. I am also an accessibility analyst and tester with NNELS.

[Riane] And last but not least, Rachel.

[Rachel Osolen] Hello, I am Rachel Osolen, and I am the production coordinator at NNELS.

[Riane] Thank you. And we also have Megan Sellmer, who is the all-powerful person behind the scenes today. And so, if you run into anything, please direct message Megan Sellmer, and she will be able to help you out.

All right, with that, we will get started. We are going to have a quick, kind of like first-hand story and kind of organizational approach to social media from Karen McKay from CELA.

[Karen McKay] Hi again everyone. I just wanted first to thank everybody for coming. It's really heartening to see so many folks here. I know that the idea of building accessibility into communications and doing it well can be a bit intimidating. Especially if we don't have first-hand knowledge or we're not familiar with the way all the pieces fit together. So I think it's just awesome there’s so many people here who are interested in learning and improving. And it shows a real commitment to inclusive, welcoming, and accessible communications. So thanks for coming.

As I said earlier, I'm the communications manager for CELA, and I've been doing that role for about seven years. But I'm not here as an expert, rather, I'm here as a colleague.  For all of you, there's some experts on this panel who are going to give you real nuts and bolts of alt text creation. And in our prep meetings, we had some really interesting conversations, so the panel discussions will be great.

So I'm just going to talk a little bit about the way alt text fits into our overall communications activities. And tell you a little bit about what I've learned. I'm not going to repeat some of the interesting stuff that's going to come up on the panel. So here's what I've learned: alt text is more art than science. There's no way to provide exactly the right information to every one of your patrons who relies on alt text because our information needs all differ.

In advance of this presentation, I reached out to about ten different people who use alt text in their daily lives to give me some just some quick feedback and answer a few questions I had. And you can probably guess I got ten very different responses to my questions and very interesting pieces of feedback. But what was really interesting to me was almost every one of them acknowledged that what they were offering was their own personal preference. And it would vary depending on who I was asking. So this is your permission to do your very best but to also realize that you are going to be offering a valuable service even if you don't meet everyone's very specific needs all the time. So just, you know, go easy on yourselves about getting it perfect because it won't happen.

The second thing I want to talk about is context, and this might be the most important takeaway from the this part of my presentation today. A good way to evaluate this is actually was actually offered by one of the folks that I spoke to prior to the presentation. And she said that she wants to get the same information that sighted users might get at a glance. What they get, and what they need. So if we're talking about alt text for things like infographics, or charts, or graphs, we're going to need to spend lots more time explaining the specifics of what those images include. They're more complex, obviously, and they require more comprehensive descriptions, assuming that the content's not fully described in the text. But if we're just talking about the image of a book cover used in social media or in a newsletter, you don't need a paragraph to describe it. Again, unless that book cover's the focus of a broader discussion or conveys very important information that's not otherwise included in the text. For example, it might have the medallion on it, it designates the book as an award winner.

We're going to come back to context, I think, in the panel discussion. And I think you'll be really interested to hear what some of the folks on the panel have to say. The third thing I want to acknowledge is that there are going to be competing priorities. I think that this is important just to talk about right up front, those of us who are sighted and able to see an image gather a lot of information which informs our understanding about context and provides, sorry, provides a lot of context. Especially when we're talking about images of people. Some of the information we gather can provide insight and visual cues to someone's gender, age, ethnicity, visible disabilities, etc. and while that information isn't always essential to understanding the messaging, it can give us a fuller picture. Please pardon that pun.

So describing those characteristics to someone else, through alt text, possibly leads us to have to assign a gender or an ethnicity or a race or any other number of characteristics. Or alternatively, it could be meaning, could mean that we are providing less complete information than what we can gather visually. Which may be fine, again depending on the context. Or it might mean that we need to make some value judgments about what we think is important and have that be reflected in our alt text. So if your library has a very comprehensive DEI policy or inclusive language policy, you might want to have some conversations with your team about this. And there'll be some things that we'll talk about,
a little bit later in the presentation, which I think you can use as good conversation starters.

And then a couple of other sort of just quick things to do, so the goal for alt text is to keep it clear, accurate, and relevant. You want to be specific as possible and succinct as possible.
A great tip is to read your alt text out loud while you're looking at the context of the rest
of your page. Is it clear? Does it make sense? Does it add to your understanding of the content? If it does, then you've done a good job. And also, try not to repeat yourself, which can be challenging if you're, you know, you've already got the book title in the text. And that's your thing, we'll talk a little bit more about that in the panel, but I think that that's something important. We want to be respectful of the time and the effort that it takes to use alt text and to make sure that we're not editorializing in our comments. There, so those are my few quick tips, and I'm going to hand it back to Riane.

[Riane] Thank you so much, Karen. Those are some great tips! We're going to kind of shift gears here and have a little bit of a demonstration or a couple demonstrations and then we'll carry on to the next little bit here.

[Simon] A screen reader is a piece of software that runs on a computer or computer device that allows a person to operate it without seeing the screen. This is generally intended for blind or visually impaired people who can't operate the device by looking at it. These have been around almost as long as home computers have, but more recently, they've become baked into every major operating system. So, for instance, all of Apple's devices have a screen reader called VoiceOver that could be enabled from accessibility settings or the equivalent. TalkBack on Android, Narrator on Windows, and there are some free and commercial options as well that run on both these operating systems. So the way this work depends on how the device works. On a touchscreen device, they typically use some custom gestures to get things done. On a computer, they typically use the keyboard.

Most screen reader users are not mouse users. They navigate everything with the keyboard unless it's a touchscreen device. So on this smartphone that I'm using, which is purely touchscreen, the gestures to get around are pretty simple. If I touch something, where, without VoiceOver enabled, touching something would open it. With VoiceOver enabled, touching something will tell me what it is. So, for instance, if I touch the bottom left corner of this Twitter app,

[Screen Reader] Home tab, new items.

[Simon] It says "Home tab, new items," which is the tab on the bottom left of Twitter. Rather than having to drag my finger around to explore, I can use what are called swipe gestures to get around. if I swipe to the right, VoiceOver will try to systematically move me to the next item on the screen, in order of top to bottom, left to right.

[Screen Reader] Selected Search and Explore tab.

[Simon] So, that says "selected" before it, because I searched for this account that I'm viewing right now. Click right one more time,

[Screen Reader] Spaces tab, communities tab, new item, notifications tab, messages tab, one new item, messages tab.

[Simon] And it just makes a vibration to indicate that it's the end and repeats what it's said. So we can explore this screen a little bit more.

[Screen Reader] BibliosAccessiblesLibraries, this thread is intended for demonstration purposes only and will be removed shortly. One slash four two hours ago, one reply one like, next.

[Simon] Then swipe to the right. Now, if I wanted to show the rest of the thread, I could double-tap to activate this control.

[Screen Reader] Twitter profile photo BibliosAccessiblesLibraries, button.

[Simon] And now it's opened a new screen.

[Screen Reader] Double-tap to view BibliosAccessiblesLibraries.

[Simon] and I can touch anywhere on the screen to view what's there.

[Riane] We will get into another demonstration here. I'm just going to get it pulled up. All right, so now that we've learned a little bit about how a screen reader works, now we're going to see something in practice here.

[Patrick] This is a demonstration of alt text...

[Riane] just one second. Okay, perfect I was a little worried that I forgot to share the audio, but I'm sure people would have stopped me. Right?

[Patrick] ...on images posted to Facebook, and we're going to be demonstrating the difference between good and bad alt text and the difference that it makes. So I'm going to go ahead and switch to the Facebook app.

[Screen Reader] App switcher, photos, Facebook, accessible, Facebook.

[Patrick] Where I have the Accessible Libraries page open. And what we have here are the same photo posted three times. The first time was left with Facebook's automatically generated alt text, we didn't provide any. The second is with poor alt text, and the third is with good alt text. So we're going to locate these and run through them.

[Screen Reader] Accessibility, see all, accessible libraries dot ca slash bibliosaccessibles.ca, two hours ago, public, more options, this post is a demonstration of AI-generated alt text it will soon be deleted, photo, may be an image of office and indoor, react, two-finger double-tap to interact with this post, action available.

[Patrick] Sorry about that, it says it "may be a photo of office and indoor," so it's very, very basic, very non-specific, you might even argue it's not even an office because if it's a library, then that's not exactly entirely accurate. So it gives me a very small amount of information that it's indoors and more about what it's not. Which is, you know, tells me it's, for example, it's not an outdoor scene, it's not a screenshot of text, but otherwise, it tells me very little. It's Facebook trying to be helpful, but it just, it can't do a very good job. So that's why it's important to add alt text to photos.

[Screen Reader] accessible libraries dot ca slash bibliosaccessibles.ca two hours ago, public, more options, a demonstration of bad alt text, this post will soon be deleted, photo a library computer station, react, two-fingered.

[Patrick] So a library computer station a little bit better, but that doesn't tell us very much about the station or about the purpose of the image being posted. Like what's it trying to show? What is it trying to tell us? So again, it's a little better it gives me more ideas of what it is and isn't, but for me to actually be able to interact with it and understand why it's being posted, it doesn't help very much.

[Screen Reader] "accessible libraries dot ca slash bibliosaccessibles dot ca, two hours ago, public, more options, a demonstration of good alt text, this post will soon be deleted. Photo, a library computer station with four black computer slash monitor combos, each with a keyboard and a mouse. The computers are set up on two white rectangular tables pushed together to form a square. Each table has two computers that face chairs that are tucked under the tables, one in front of each computer. Bookcases and other seating areas are arranged in the background, react two things.

[Patrick] So that is the example of good alt text. So that, like the previous one, was written by a human, but there is much more detail. I get a much better sense of what's in the image and now I know exactly what I'm looking at. So that's the difference between good alt text, bad alt text, and no alt text, which defaults, in Facebook's case, to AI-generated.

[Riane] All right, and we will do one more set of demos here. Talking about alt text on Twitter with a little bit of a different kind of image. And this first one is non-existent alt text, so this is something that is going to be generated.

[Simon] So I'm on one of the tweets in this demonstration thread and VoiceOver is going to try and describe this image, and it's not going to do a very good job of it. There is no alt text on this image whatsoever this is purely my phone trying to do image descriptions.

[Screen Reader] Having a movie night stay in and watch free movies with your library card, two slash four, landscape, image sign gammage beyond food, sd, at the fork Deeney, young coda, am vodger vegetal or charade dy Kanopy we were neat, siri, thoughtful entertainment present, displays this image full size.

[Simon] That's definitely not useful at all, and without alt text, I have no idea what this image could possibly be. I don't know if everyone caught it there but the screen reader was trying to read like the little clips in the background of text that it could pick up.

[Riane] And now we'll have an another version of that with adequate alt text.

[Simon] So here's another version of the image, with alt text that is technically better than nothing, in that it exists and is accurate, but it's very uninformative.

[Screen reader] Having a movie night? Stay in and watch free movies with your library card 3 slash 4, Kanopy thoughtful
entertainment image.

[Simon] So this alt text does kind of tell me what the image is, but it doesn't tell me much. There may be information in the image that isn't conveyed properly. I have no idea what the image looks like visually and I don't know whether "thoughtful entertainment" is just Kanopy's slogan or whether it's written in the image. And as we're about to see there's quite a lot of missing information that could be conveyed in an alt text pretty easily.

[Riane] Now the better version.

[Simon] Now the final version of this image with what we would like to think is a pretty good alt text.

[Screen Reader] Having a movie night? Stay in and watch free movies with your library card, four slash four. Kanopy logo and slogan, Kanopy thoughtful entertainment written on a washed out background mosaic of movie covers image 13.

[Simon] So that image tells me what it is, the Kanopy logo, what's in the image, and basically, is a whole lot more useful than the last one we looked at. I think this speaks for itself and it definitely conveys meaningful information to somebody who can't see the image, which is the purpose of an alt text.

[Riane] All right, Simon or Patrick do you have anything to add about either of your demos before we go on? All right, with that, we will let Karen Chidiak from EPL take it from here.

[Karen Chidiak] Hi everyone, just let me include my presentation. Can everyone see it?

Great! So today, I'd like to share three easy tips for accessibility to improve your accessibility. I wanted to also share that the Edmonton Public Library is beginning to become more accessible in our social media channels. So it is a journey, and since some customers use assistive technology to find out what's happening in the world, we also wanted to ensure that they have the tools to find out what's going on in ours.

As a public library, it is our mission to share information in an inclusive way, whether it is in person or online, and to help people access all information to facilitate learning and growth. So today, I wanted to share this tip to improve your accessibility on social media.

So let's begin with tip one. We talked about alternative text and we know that's very important, and it should be done with every single post, whether you think it is decorative purposes or if it does have complementary message to your post. So in 2022, we have placed greater emphasis in trying to make our social posts more readable. Alt text helps customers who use assistive technologies, like screen readers and speech recognition software. Adding alt text creates a more inclusive customer experience since AI technology lacks details and is often inaccurate.

So here's an example on Twitter where we added alt text to the image. Consider using a description with every post you do. It adds context to what you're trying to convey. To tell if an image has a description, you can look for alt text icon on the bottom left-hand corner of the image.

When creating the alt text, ask yourself questions like: How would you describe this image to someone who's visually impaired? Does it add value to the way the message will be received? What is the meaning of the image? Our end goal is for all readers to be able to understand the message you want to share. This is the same example, showing you the alt text and the meaning of it. It tells the user there is an image in a graphic and specific content, but if this was not here there would be no graphic and no label to tell the story. So think of the subjects, the setting, and any other relevant information.

Image descriptions on social posts are helpful for people with learning disabilities as well. This is how it looks when we click on the alt icon in the left-hand corner. And it says people are seen standing around talking to each other, looking at the baked goods they made inside the kitchen of the Milner Library. Err on the side of inclusivity when writing your captions and descriptions should be impartial. Also, when faced with character limits on a post, you could use alt text for additional context. Another helpful tip could be if you need free royalty images that already have ready to use alt text. Consider going to unsplash.com to have really good images and ready-to-use alt text.

My second tip, it's about writing in Pascal case. As you can see here, it's the best way to capitalize the first letter of every word so that screen readers can read it with the spaces in them. Much easier to read multiple words with the spaces in the case with this example write your hashtags like this. Here's an example. Due to the widespread multi-worded hashtags on social media, we have lots of compound phrases. So the need for Pascal case and hashtags is greater than ever before. In this post about Indigenous People's days, we made use of two relevant hashtags: #IndigenousPeoplesDay and #YEGIndigenous for Edmonton, the City of Edmonton. And this enables the automated screen readers in reading the hashtag much easier.

Remember, we're still optimizing our posts at EPL, we're still learning, and one thing we learned about after we published this post was that it's best to keep all hashtags at the end of the content for less disruption for the screen readers. So we're moving away from including hashtags in the middle of the content or post going forward. Here's another example and we use two hashtags: #PrideMonth and #EPLPride. And as you can see, they were both capped.

In addition, you can apply thoughtful use of emojis. Today's emojis catalogue includes nearly 3,000 illustrations, representing everything from emotions, to food, to people at various stages of their life, and also gender neutral. You can see here, the use of the rainbow flag imagery. You can also refer to Emojipedia for more ideas.

In this last one, as I mentioned earlier, EPL's still learning, and we're changing slowly to our Pascal case hashtags here. Although this post shows a different hashtag or lowercase, I wanted to include this example because we wanted to ensure that also our images are inclusive. An image with a person with a disability, it's important because representation really matters, so consider using photos that include people of all abilities.

My last tip is about using video captions. Doing this will increase the number of people you will reach. Did you know that data from Facebook shows that branded content is designed for sound off was rated higher. Having a 48% more relevance and 38% more brand interest. So have video captions to increase your reach. Here is an example of a recent video that we shared on Twitter. Make sure your videos always have captioning, and they help people with hearing impairments, but also new language learners, and viewers who are watching with some sound off. So consider a consistent-looking feel, a solid background that's easy to read, a news color contrast for visibility. Consider using this every time or every video.

Be sure to review your captions closely to make sure it's accurate. Voice recognition software still has difficulty picking up original accents, maybe mine, and an auto caption you can often translate into gibberish. So here's another one too that we did in our new kitchen. We tried to follow that consistent captioning style. This is another video example with same caption style as the one I showed you before. There are many options for speech-to-text service. We use rev.com.com, a company that enables speech-to-text easily and economically. The pricing is calculated based on what is transcribed, captioned, or subtitled for your content. It's about a dollar and fifty cents USD per minute to convert your audio or video to text with high accuracy.

So we're often updating our writing style guide for social as we learn what the best practices are and we want the content to be understandable, to reflect positively on our brand, and to connect with customers and reach more people. So these are my three easy tips that we implemented recently at EPL and I hope that this has been of interest to you and have a great day. Thanks.

[Riane] Thank you, Karen. All right. Ka, we'll do your demonstrations now. Let me know when you want me to play the first video.

[Ka] Sure, if you can play the first video now. I'll talk about it afterwards. [

Riane] Perfect.

[Screen Reader] Heading level one, visited link go to home, main landmark, graphic, may be an image of text.

[Ka] Okay, so what you just heard like a lot of, hold on, sorry. Yep, so what you've heard is what's called non-existent alt text because Facebook, in this case, tried to generate the alt text. Like the previous demos that you've heard. And, I know it was a pretty short video, but here we're describing an infographic.

And as you know, an infographic has a lot of information. So something like an "image of
text" isn't very helpful considering how much information you're losing just with this generated image description. So next let's take a look at better alt text.

[Screen Reader] heading level one, visited link, go to home, main landmark, graphical How Canadian public library stack up. Canadians go to libraries to find jobs, create new careers, graphic, and help grow our small businesses. We borrow books, journals, music, and movies. We learn to use, graphic, the latest technology. We get our questions answered, engage in civic activities, meet with, graphic, friends and co-workers, and improve our skills at one of the 600 star Canadian public libraries. Here, graphic, are a few ways that Canadian public libraries stack up. Movie night: Canadian public libraries, graphic, circulate 10 times more dvds than zip.com each day. Canadian public libraries 261,000 DVDs zip dot co, graphic, 24,000 DVDs, no ticket required. Canadians visit the library almost as much as we go to the movies, graphic, and 20 times more often than we attend Canadian NHL games each year. A cultural journey: graphic, Canadians enjoy cultural trips away from home. Over half of Canadians visit public libraries, graphic, annually. What we carry: nearly two out of three Canadians have library cards, about as many as, graphic, have passports link previously next.

[Ka] So as you can tell, there's a lot of text in this image and it actually flows pretty well because we can still get the idea of what this image is trying to convey. So I would say that this is pretty decent alt text. However, because it's an infographic, there's still a lot of images scattered throughout that really give it its personality, and so in terms of the best alt text that we can do here's the next demo.

[Screen Reader] Heading level three, link accessible libraries dot co slash biblios accessibles dot com. This post is for demonstration purposes only, it will soon be deleted. link graphic and infographic about library news and six sections. There are four horizontal panels the last two, link graphic, panels are split in half vertically, link graphic. Top panel: patron engaging with library staff and information desk. Title text: "How Canadian public, link graphic, library stack up" OCLC logo with slogan: "the world's libraries connected," link graphic. Second panel: map of Canada with text "every month 204,000 Canadians get jobs. You can help, link graphic. Their public library: Canadians go to libraries to find jobs, create new careers, and help grow our, link graphics, small businesses. We borrow books journals, music, and movies. We learn to use the latest, link graphic, technology. We get our questions answered, engage in civic activities, meet with friends and, link graphic, co-workers, and improve our skills at one of the 600 star Canadian public libraries. Here are a few ways, link graphic, that Canadian public library stack up. Star. There are 607 public library locations covered by the, link graphic, Canadian urban libraries councils (2010 Canadian Public Library statistics report), link graphic. Third panel - left side: a movie night pie chart resembling DVD. The large portion of the pie reads, link graphic, 261,000 DVDs. The small slice reads 24,000 DVDs. Canadian Public library circulate 10 times more, link graphic, DVDs than zip.com each day. (Sources: OCLC 2011 primary research, www.momentous.com), link graphic, third panel - right side: No ticket required line. Drawing of a library with text: "library visits: link graphic, 100.2 million." Line drawing of a cinema with text: "Movie attendance: 112.2 million." Line drawing, link graphic, of a hockey player on skates with stick with text: "NHL attendance: 4.8 million." Canadians visit the, link graphic, library almost as much as we go to the movies and 20 times more often then we attend Canadian NHL, link graphic, games each year. (Sources: Canadian urban libraries council 2010, Canadian public library, link graphic, Statistics Canada motion pictures theatres 2010, ESPN NHL attendance report, link graphic, 2011 2012), link graphic. Fourth panel-left side: Our cultural journey. Bar chart highlighting the stats. Over half of Canadians, linked graphic, visit public libraries annually. Zoos, Aquariums, and Planetariums 42%;  Live theatrical performances, link graphic, 44%; Museums, 48%; Public libraries 56%; Conservation areas and nature parks 58%; Movie theatre 68%; link graphic, Canadians enjoy cultural trips away from home. (Source OCLC 2011 primary research, link graphic, strategies 2012, statistical insights on the arts), link graphic, Fourth panel-right side: What we carry. An open wallet with a library card inside with text "62%," link graphic, I have a library card. A Canadian passport with text "64% have a passport." Nearly two out of three, link graphic, Canadians have library cards about as many as have passports. (Source: OCLC 2011 primary, link graphic, research, Passport Canada annual report for 2010-2011). Content info landmark, two mins, public.

[Ka] Yep, so as you can tell there's a lot of text, as we mentioned and now there are
image descriptions for the little icons that are associated with the text that you get. So in a sense, this is ideal alt text because it because it provides a full experience of what the content  contains. And as you've noticed sometimes, especially with the second demonstration and the third demonstration of this infographic, the screen reader would say graphic occasionally and that's because it shows that the image spans multiple lines. So every time that it moves to the
next line, it'll tell you that it's still an image. So that's just a little extra thing there. And for this we use Facebook because it use, it has a lot of, a big character count, so you don't have to split up your post as you might need to do in other social media platforms. But also in this case, because there's a lot of information, typically a screen reader user wouldn't listen to the whole thing all at once, in this way. We would navigate it almost like a document in order to get the pieces of information we need. So that's it for me.

[Riane] Thank you so much all right, so we are going to take a quick poll of participants before we head into our panel discussion. A poll will pop up here right away and the question is: We just want to know, get a sense from everyone who's attending, how comfortable you are with the topics that we're discussing today (accessible social media, marketing, and alt text)
and see where you are with everything so we can tailor our answers accordingly.

I'll give people a couple more seconds here. All right, and we can end the poll.

And it looks like we have a fairly good group, with most people feeling pretty comfortable, like somewhat comfortable. All right, with that, our first question in the panel discussion today is: What is the importance of making your social media posts and marketing accessible and inclusive?  And we'll start with Karen Chidiak.

[Karen Chidiak] Why is it important? It is because you want to be as inclusive as you can for the reader to be able to understand the content, to be able to reach more people. Make it as easy as we can for anyone who is going through our feeds. It is to improve our library experience, not just in person but virtually. It's all about that customer experience for me.

[Riane] Thank you. Patrick?

[Patrick] Well, I largely echo what she said, and it's so important to be as inclusive as possible because a lot of people don't realize just how many people rely on accommodations like alt text to get the same experience as everyone else. Common figure cited is that 15% of the population identifies as having some sort of a disability. And not all disabilities will have, will be relevant to alt text. But the point I'm making is that there are probably more people visiting
your social media, wanting to come to your library, all that kind of stuff, then you realize. And begin taking the steps to be as inclusive as possible is opening your posts up to a much bigger market.

[Riane] Thank you. Karen McKay?

[Karen McKay] So our main reason for being here today is alt text for people who have print disabilities, but actually, alt text does a number of other things as well. It can help those in your community who have limited Internet access or may have slow rural access and they've turned off image downloads to save data charges so they can get the gist of what your communications are just by using the alt text versus downloading the images. It can also help people who have sensory processing or learning disabilities who may need to turn off images to limit visual distractions when they're trying to read. And lastly, alt text also plays a role in SEO rankings, it gives search engines more and better information so they can rank your website, and they'll rank it higher. So just remember that alt text and in the context that we're talking about that's not the primary purpose, but it is an added benefit. For an added reason for making really good alt text.

[Riane] Thank you. Simon? One thing I'd like to add is that, a lot of people with a disability are likely to be using technology to get information, despite accessibility barriers. Technology opens a lot of doors for us and if we see a social media presence or a website that doesn't use a lot of alt text, it's really easy to assume that the space won't be accessible either, the physical space. That's probably not correct, that's not really a fair correlation to make, but it is a very easy assumption to make.

[Riane] Thank you. Any other panelists have anything to add there? All right, our next question: when writing alt text, what are some considerations for prioritizing pieces of information? So how do you organize the information? Patrick, we'll start with you.

[Patrick] Well for prioritizing information, the most important thing is what is the purpose of the image that you're posting. Are you marketing something? Are you trying to highlight a title in your collection? Are you giving a tip? Or is it just like a fun feel-good post? Give me any of those, but consider what the primary purpose is and what parts of the picture are most important to that and give them the most weight because other than saying it, other than an infographic, you want to keep your alt text fairly concise. You don't want it to go on for paragraphs and paragraphs. So what you want to do is, you want to focus on what's most important and for organizing, it's going to depend on the image.

I'd like to refer back to what was said earlier about reading your alt text out loud and imagining yourself hearing it and not seeing the image. Are you getting the gist of what you want people to get from that image? As what's important in that image being conveyed properly and does it make sense to hear it without seeing it? I think that's the best advice I can offer for that because otherwise, it's going to depend on what image you're posting. Like a fun feel-good image is going to have different priorities and maybe a different organization than an advertisement.

[Riane] Thank you. Ka?

[Ka]Yeah, I like what Patrick said about understanding the purpose of the image, what you're trying to convey. So after you figure that out, there's still a lot of information to try to sift through and figure out how to craft each of your sentences. So from a more technical nuts and bolts perspective, I would say break down the image into small components, into small pieces of information and then order them and their relevance so that they flow nicely and conveys the ideas that you want to convey. But when you do that, it actually makes the task of describing the image, especially a more complicated image like the infographic I was showing, much less intimidating.

[Riane] Thank you. Karen Chidiak?

[Karen Chidiak] I love what Ka just stated in terms of breaking down the information into chunks. I think of even just answering the question as to why we are using the specific image?
To whom do we want to represent the content? What is it that is so relevant, that you want
the audience to take away? So just even going through those thought processes, just to capture the most important description that we can and at the same time being concise, it's a difficult task. When an image has a lot of descriptions that we could use, and obviously, trying to also be objective. So you know the what, the why are we trying to use this image and what do we want them to take away, for me is one of the most important ones to keep in mind.

[Raine] Thank you. Karen McKay?

[Karen McKay] So I'm going to be a bit of a broken record, I think and just to echo what other folks are saying. What I would say also, is to think about the context in which you're communicating and the purpose, again, of what you're using the image for. I'll give you a little scenario. So I just was working on our newsletter, and we were featuring the Griffin Poetry Prize winner and he's a black man and his work centers a lot around social justice and the Immigrant experience. And so we had a little quick conversation on our team about, do we include the description of this man as a black man? Do we include a description of him as a, you know, as dark complexion? And what does it matter within the context of this particular image that we're putting out there. So think about what you're trying to communicate. Think about what's important to you. If you are able to see the images visually, what's, what are you taking away from it that's helping you inform the rest of the messaging and use that to help guide what it is that you're trying to communicate. That'll help you with your alt text descriptions.

[Riane] Thank you. Rachel, do you have anything else to add?

[Rachel] Yeah, I first like definitely echo the idea of context is key. When I'm training people, my core staff or publishers on how to write alt text I repeat that like a parrot. It is so important. And context includes your audience, the purpose of the image, and also the any surrounding text right. And it goes back to like not being repetitive right.

So you first, actually a really good thing to remember is first ask yourself what would the reader lose if I did not describe this image? That helps you figure out what the image is saying, and it's tied into the context. So I always like to tell people to try to keep in mind that alt text replaces an image with text. I know a lot of people when they start writing alt text, they kind of get weighed down with this idea of like a narrative description right and that's part of it. Alt text is kind of like, is a combination of creative and technical writing. So if you bear that in mind it's kind of like switching your perspective on how an image acts, especially if you are someone who doesn't have a print disability.

You're not as self-conscious of how much visual information you're bringing into in and it just takes practice. It really does take practice, and there's a lot of great resources out there, including this panel. When it comes to the structure, it's usually kind of, like the bare bones of a structure, is like almost always the same, the amount of detail will change right. So you always want to try to go big and then small or start from general to specific so it kind of sets things up.

The best advice I ever got was actually from Ka, he helps me with my training of my staff, and he, you and I still use this all the time, it's this idea of entering a room. So you walk into a room, you're at the gate, you're at the doorway to the room and you look into the room. How are you going to describe that room to somebody? Well, the first thing you're going to say is what the room is. For instance, right now I'm in an office, so I'm going to be like "I am in an office" right or "this is an office" or... however, you're going to word it right and then you just go into some more bigger details like the layout of the room. And do it in order, like you're walking somebody through the room. You're not gonna jump around and say what's on the left wall and also what's on the right wall and what's up in the upper corner because that's going to be disorientating. So you want to do it, that's when it comes down to the logical order, and trying not to jump around and going from big to small.

And yeah just remember that, like you want to avoid what is termed "cognitive overload" as well right. And by giving things structure and being careful with your grammar, so using like active voice, present tense, punctuation properly will really help guide that person through the description.

[Raine] Thank you. Our next question: how do you ensure inclusive language is used in your posts in marketing? Rachel, we'll start with you.

[Rachel] Yeah this is a really important question and I kind of want to start with saying that this is one of those things where like you really have to take the responsibility to stay current with what community needs and trends are and recognize that it's going to constantly be shifting. Be open-minded and sensitive to other, community needs. And that kind of goes with alt text. Alt texts, when we learn more, and we get more feedback from the print disability community, we get better at how we do it. So things will slightly shift.

If something's like culturally specific, such as like say a piece of regalia, you want to start with describing what it looks like and then also use the specific name of what it is, if possible. This is when a little bit of research goes a long way. Going to the source, if you have an image from a specific community, you can ask that community directly. If you don't have the source, use your librarian skills and find out some information about the terminology used to describe that piece of clothing or jeweler or what have you.

And also, I know this was touched upon, one of the earlier presentations, this idea of having like a list of terms, like an in-house list of terms, you can also do that for culturally specific like items right. When it comes to skin tone, what we recommend at NNELS is to stick to the Emoji system. So far, I mean obviously something better could come along, but so far it's the most objective way to do it. So the idea is a light skin tone, a medium light skin tone, a a medium skin tone, a medium dark skin tone, a dark skin tone. You never say someone is like you know Korean or Vietnamese or Nigerian unless you know for sure in the context right and then like if it's explicitly stated right. And again, like that's the idea that Karen brought up about that promotion about that author who's a known black activist. You can call him black in that context, right otherwise, you'd want to go with a medium dark or dark skin tone.

Also hair texture, hair length, hair colour, age, don't be afraid to do things like: "appears like middle-aged." I'm 40 years old, I don't look 40 years old, I know people that are younger than me that look older or older than me that look younger so it's okay to be a little like "appears, like, in their 20s" and that sort of thing. And then gender is a big one. I think gender, it's a hot topic, an important topic. It's ongoing as everything else. For culturally, and specific and inclusive language and again you should only state it if it's explicit.

You don't want to accidentally misgender someone, so you want to try to be gender-neutral as much as possible. So for instance a person with a medium light skin tone, with long black straight hair wears a yellow dress and smiles, right. They're a person instead of he or she.

[Raine] Thank you. Karen McKay?

[Karen McKay] So I would echo basically everything that Rachel said. A couple of other points to think about, again going back to context, so if you're describing a book jacket, let's say, and there is there's a parent on there, but the book is clearly about motherhood, you could identify, or fatherhood, you could identify it as mother or father.

Again it goes back to context. We did have an interesting conversation in our prep meeting for this, but also internally at CELA with regards to the use of singular "they" in alt text. And this is one of the questions I asked a small group of folks that I reached out to, just what their experience was, and this is one of those things where we need to be really careful around our language and also really cognizant of maybe creating some unintentional confusion. So singular "they,," if you're defaulting to singular "they" that's totally acceptable. And that's something, you know, I think society's moving towards, but some of the respondents to my very quick questionnaire said that they can find it confusing at times. They think perhaps they've missed something in alt text or it wasn't accurately described, if there's only mention of one person and the use of singular "they" and it's not clear. So some of the things you can do to sort of avoid that is to identify how many people are in the picture to begin with. So there's one person in the image, they are wearing a yellow dress, as an example, rather than just defaulting to a singular "they."

The other thing that I would say is in addition to staying current with regards to what is sort of the best practices around inclusive language, a little research goes a long way on your particular topic, your particular author, your particular book, your particular group. So you know that's something I try and find if I can, how they identify themselves. Or usually, the publisher is a good place to go, usually, the publisher gets it right. Or Twitter handles usually get it right. Like those are some of the default places that I go if I'm trying to identify, for some reason, the appropriate way to identify somebody's gender or race. If they have a preference about being identified that way. So it takes a little extra time but not a lot and it's you know it's valuable, both for the community that we're trying to serve with alt text, but also the people that we're talking about with regards to book promotion or event promotion. To make sure that we're identifying them in accordance with their preferences as well. So that's what I have to say about particular topics.

[Riane] Thank you, Karen. Karen Chidiak do you have anything to add?

[Karen Chidiak] What I had was in terms of trying to avoid ableist language. And I know we had also those discussions earlier in our conversation about using the word we "stand," instead use the word we "support" and we had a mixed opinions about this. Depending on the recipient of the message, I think that you know it's always best to err on the side of inclusivity and be sensitive to every group that is following you on social media, and if possible, think about that as we are writing our content.

Another thought I had was oftentimes posts have that "click here," which is, you know, I would say that the lazy way to do post at times, just "click here for more information," "click here" and having more of that call to action, that's active, you know. The "learn more," the "sign up now," the "register today" would go a longer way, I think for those who are using assistive technology.

[Raine] Thank you. Ka?

[Ka] Yeah I think this is a really interesting topic and as Rachel mentioned it's always changing based on the community's needs and so when it comes to including skin tone, for example, it's there there's been a very opinionated discussion, really good discussion about whether they include or not. And some people believe that it really depends on the context and that it's not always necessary to include skin tone for images of people, but others say that it should be a default because a lot of, well they're thinking is that as sighted people, you know, you can see the skin tone of the person and be able to just acknowledge that as you look at the image.

But as screen reader users, we may not be able to and sometimes there's that unintended
assumption that all the images that appear with people in it may be white. And so to make sure that that's not the case, advocates, some advocates are saying that it's important to include skin tone in every image with people in it.

[Riane] Thank you. Simon, anything else to add?

[Simon] I think that when it comes to words that could be conceived as ablest like "stand" or "see," for instance, it's really important to consider context and find a balance. I would never ever want somebody to not say something like "see you later" in conversation. When it comes to things like "we stand with you," I think that there is an argument to be made for that because people literally stand.

And there are interesting little distinctions, like if an alt text said something like "we can see from this image that whatever..." that would be fine. If it said "you" can see from this image, my brain would just go, well no I can't actually. So it's really important to find that balance and maybe even survey people with lived experience with the disabilities that you're concerned about portraying wrongly and make sure that this is something that they actually asked for. Because in a lot of cases this kind of inclusive language can go too far, and it often does,
but it's also just important to make sure that you're, you know, being inclusive where you can.

[Rinae] Thank you. Patrick anything else?

[Patrick] That I think the point about not making assumptions is important, and that applies to the subjects of the photo but also about the people who are going to be looking at it or reading the alt text. So you want to describe what's in the images and let's let people interpret them as you would, say someones sighted looks at an image they might make any inferences or references about the content. Do the same thing with their alt text, describe what's in there factually and let the people reading the alt text interpret it the same way. You don't want to make assumptions about what they can and can't understand or extra explanations you think they may need.

[Riane] Thank you.

[Karen McKay] Yeah, can I just echo something there, so I think both Ka and I think Patrick said it sort of reminded me about the idea of taking our own bias out or trying to take our own bias out of the communication. So deciding, like when we decide what is relevant or not relevant based on a set of assumptions, that's problematic.

Also, when we include language that's sort of editorializing or sort of assigning a motive to something in a picture that's also problematic. So try and keep the language as factual as possible and complete as possible. I personally, I sort of err on trying to improve, include more detail around things like skin tone and age, etc., where possible. Because I do think that, as sighted users of images, we we do gather a lot of information that sort of helps inform our impression of a situation, an author, a story, a picture, whatever and by determining that information might not be appropriate (in air quotes) really denies the folks who are using alt text the opportunity to make their own judgments about things. So just, you know, double-check your biases when you're writing all text, about what you're including and what you're not.

[Riane] Thank you. All right, so are you you're all ready for like the count of three here, should alt text be included in every post? One, two, three:

[Everyone] YES!

[Riane] Yay, they did it! [

Laughter]

[Riane] All right, Simon I'll let you take it from here,

[Simon] So I think that there's been a lot of discussion about whether alt texts should be included on decorative posts and it's a point of confusion because decorative images on websites shouldn't have alt text. They're usually just there for, well decoration, and they're there to make the content more visually interesting. So a lot of those images that are just background can have an empty alt text, and then screen reading technologies will just ignore them entirely. On social media this isn't the case, if there's an image the social the screen reader is going to say image, we saw this in one of the earlier demos, where there was a Kanopy image that had no alt text at all and the iPhone actually tried to describe what the image was. So this is the kind of consequence of not having alt text on every image, if there's no alt text we don't know if it's important or what it could be. It can be a small concise alt text of what it is, but even an alt text that just says it's a logo is better than nothing because then we know that it's just a logo and isn't important for some other level of understanding of the post.

[Rine] Thank you. Patrick, anything to add there?

[Patrick] Nope, he said everything I was going to say.

[Riane] Perfect, well not perfect, but perfect. Rachel?

[Rachel] I guess just basically echoing is everyone deserves the same access to information. Alt text is essential to accessibility. It's one of like without alt text, your information will not be accessible, your content will not be accessible, and you will be alienating people in your community. So it's just, it's not a, it's a, it's, you gotta do it. And don't worry, you get better with practice. Just starting somewhere and keep going, you're doing great.

[Riane] Karen Chidiak?

[Karen Chidiak] I agree 100% with everything that has been said about this. And even if in social media we feel that it may be just an image that complements a post and looks decorative in purpose, it may have meaning in terms of even the colour, the shape, to certain cultures. I think of the Indigenous Communities' specific colours that have meaning geographically or have healing significance depending on what those colours are. And not including what we see for those that are unable to, it takes away from the meaning and the relevance of what we're trying to share. So for every post, definitely there should be more description for those who are unable to see it.

[Riane] Thank you. Does anyone have anything else to add here? Excellent. All right, so last question before we open up to our lovely participants today. When is it best to include the image description or alt text in the alt text or as an inline description with a post? Ka, we'll start with you.

[Ka} Sure, so I think for me it really doesn't matter whether you include the alt text in the alt text field or in the post itself. I think the expectation of the disability community is that it's important to include alt text and I think most people aren't very picky about where it is.

As we found with Facebook, when we added the alt text for the infographic it was a long description and it fit into the alt text field, so that was fine. But in something like Twitter, where the character limit is a lot smaller you would have to probably break that up into multiple tweets in a single thread, or share a link to a word document or some sort of accessible document with the description in it.

[Riane] Thank you. Karen McKay?

[Karen McKay] So yeah, I just echo that the most important thing is that it's there. I think the second most important thing is that it's in a place that's easily understood and found.

There is a benefit including it as inline text, in terms of normalizing the process, to make sure that folks understand that alt text, an image description is something that they should be thinking about. Also, you know we're we are kind of at the whim of Facebook. They seem to change the way they do things, kind of, I don't know, daily.

So you know if it's a challenge for you to get it into the alt text in Facebook, if you're trying to get through the meta business page and it's not showing up (which has been happening to me lately), you know, putting in an inline text is an acceptable option. But just really it's the importance is that it's there.

[Riane] Thank you. Rachel?

[Rachel] Yeah, it's going to add on to what Karen just said is that I remember, I know it's a trend starting on Instagram, where people started doing inline descriptions, and then Instagram started making it so now you can put all text in it. So like sometimes it also can enact change within the platform because they understand, they see a need and then they're like "oh money, I'll make this a thing." The only thing I want to add is a bit of an air of caution when doing inline descriptions. Not all the, not all images are going to require long descriptions.

A majority of the image that you're going to come across are what we term as medium images. It's basically like a medium, the easiest way to describe a medium image is something that takes like two to four sentences to describe, you know, and it's a bit more complicated than a simple image. A simple image would just be like a logo right or something that's a little more decorative. I don't want, I'm, I worry about people getting too much in the habit of over description.

Again, it's really important to edit down your alt text. Edit, editing and alt text is really important right. I'll actually be treated like any other part of writing that you do, and it should go through the same rigorous process of any, as any of your writing. So you want to be able if you feel like you're have, your feel like you're describing a more simpler image, and it's getting too long, then just go back to editing and try to describe it down, so you're more clear and direct and concise. Because, again, I go back to what I said earlier about "cognitive overloads."

The average person remembers like five to seven things at a time. I have a learning disability, which causes a print disability, so I can only remember two to three things on a good day, which is actually really good for me because it makes me really good at editing people's alt text when I get overwhelmed. Because I get overwhelmed pretty quickly.

So a thing you should remember is, like one guideline that you could use is
the habit of using it for complex images that require more information. Complex images
most commonly are graphs, maps, and charts, like the infograph that we saw earlier. And if an image has text, transcribe that text. So if it has text in it or if it's an image that is full text, please fully transcribe it. You should never ever have an image with text in it that isn't transcribed. Because, also, be aware that it's not just I think, describing it, inline's also really useful because, like I've noticed this trend on Instagram where everyone's like doing like really small text and really bad colour coordination. You can't zoom that, right. Or they're repeating in their stories on Facebook and Instagram and you can't read it and I can't read it, and the zoom's not going to work. So just be wary of that right. But then at the same time as long as you're keeping those things like tight and you put it inline, it kind of shows the community like at large that this is some, this is a standard that everyone should be doing. And it also shows the platform "hey this is a standard that we want and you need to implement into your system."

[Riane] Excellent. thank you. Megan can we stop the recording and the live stream? Thank you so much for everyone who is attending there and here.