Often, 140 characters are just not enough to make your point on Twitter.
That's what allows images accompanying those tweets to enhance the overall Twitter experience, enabling each user to explain themselves all the more better. After all, the adage of a picture being worth a thousand words still rings true to this day. Taking that into consideration, the social media app wants to make sure that images shared on its platform are accessible to everyone, including those users who are visually impaired.
That's precisely why the company announced Tuesday that its iOS and Android app users can now add descriptions to images in tweets. The descriptions, which are known as alternative text, or simply alt text, is being offered to ensure that the images are accessible to the widest possible audience.
All you have to do is go to your settings, tap the Me tab and the gear icon, before tapping accessibility and dragging the slider to on under Compose image descriptions. From there, you tap the Tweet icon and attach your photo, while pressing "add description" on the image itself. You can then type out the description, with the limit being set to 420 characters. Note, though, that image descriptions can't be added to GIFs or videos.
As an example of the added feature, Twitter shows a picturesque scene with clouds being sent out as a regular tweet and then with the touted ability to add a lengthier image description.
"People who are visually impaired will have access to the description via their assistive technology (e.g., screen readers and braille displays)," Twitter said Tuesday, as part of its announcement about its images being more accessible.
The company's blog post added: "We're excited to empower our customers and publishers to make images on Twitter accessible to the widest possible audience, so everyone can be included in the conversation and experience the biggest moments together."
Twitter added that, to ensure publishers and third-party clients also have access to the broadened image use, it has extended its platform products to both the REST API and Twitter Cards. That includes specialized Twitter clients for the visually impaired, such as EasyChirp, Chicken Nugget and The Qube.
