Twitter has revealed statistics about alternative text saying that only .06% of images on the social media platform are accessible.
“Based on our research,” the official Twitter Accessibility tweet reads during Global Accessibility Awareness Day, “.06% of images on Twitter are accessible.” The tweet then links users to the company’s help documentation detailing how to add alternative text —or image descriptions— to images.
Earlier this year, Twitter rolled out a trial phase of the new alternative text feature that it later implemented for all users. This feature slaps an “Alt” badge on any images that contain alternative text, and by clicking it, the user is able to read the text. This is useful for those who may want to read the contents of an image more clearly, or even know that the content they’re sharing is accessible.
The account also shared a thread of alternative text being used well and what to look for and include when creating image descriptions. It’s also important to note that alternative text is used to describe images for users who are blind or have low vision. These users make use of accessibility features built into both applications and device hardware that allows them to browse social media.
Twitter has also spent the day tweeting about ways users can make their content on the platform accessible. This includes mentions of the auto-captions feature while also calling for users to not rely on automatic captions and instead create caption files. If you missed it, videos can now have SRT files uploaded. Twitter Spaces, the audio-only platform feature, also has a sensory guide that is published showing how users are alerted to specific actions within Spaces.
