I’ve posted before about why I think people should add image/video descriptions, but a common response is “I can’t imagine many people who need them would use tumblr”.

So I asked some disabled fans and sure enough, there are people on tumblr who use these descriptions (and not always because of visual problems or any sort of disability). Since (a)People who have trouble with some images etc may be able to access others (but would appreciate having the ones they can’t made more accessible too) and (b)Sometimes irritatingly inaccessible things have no accessible equivalent so you put up with it.

I realise that detailed descriptions and transcripts can be a pain (my own energy/cognitive issues mean I often can’t do more than a vague description myself) But if possible, when you post an image, video, or audio clip think about whether or not there’s a short simple description you could add which would help get across the point to someone who can’t access the content fully or at all. Two obvious examples are transcribing images of a single sentence of text and giving the artist and title of videos and music.

Oh, and if you’re not going to do descriptions yourself, please at least don’t remove them when other people do. That’s just frustrating.

If you read this tumblr and DO use these descriptions: is the way I do them helpful, or would you rather I did it differently?

(I’m now wondering about DeviantArt and the Homestuck fanart boards, which are the two other places I tend to post images, and where one might assume noone needs image descriptions but probably not be entirely correct)