Making Images Accessible to the Blind

The following is a guest post from Disability.gov.

Making Images Accessible to the Blind

By Guest Blogger Mel Finefrock, Editor and Freelance Writer

When it comes to photodocumentation via social media, many unknowingly describe their photos by accompanying them with little anecdotes like “Grandma and me at her 80th birthday celebration.” These sorts of descriptions add meaning to photos for all who view them, but perhaps especially for people who are blind.

When it comes to mainstream Web design though, people often overlook labeling or describing their graphics, leaving individuals who are blind at a loss for understanding the significance of them. My hope in writing this article is to encourage the use of image description and demystify the process of implementing it.

Alternative Text

There are two ways to approach describing your graphics, the first of which being alternative text, better known as alt text. What is alt text? Although it’s originally intended to serve as a placeholder for graphics in the event that a visitor to your website cannot download them, the neat thing about alt text is that screenreading software, such as JAWS (Freedom Scientific), Window-Eyes (GW Micro), NVDA (NV Access) and VoiceOver (Apple), pick up on these labels and give people who are blind feedback as to the nature of the image. As such, alt text is a great way to implement image descriptions and make your website more accessible to screenreader users.

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Measuring America: An Overview on Vision Disability Statistics.

The following was posted by The American Council for the Blind on Facebook.

Do you know how to respond when you are asked how many blind and visually impaired persons reside in the United States? This is an often asked question of advocates by legislators and other policy makers. The American Foundation for the Blind, (AFB) is working closely with the U.S. Census Bureau to plan a series of webinars which will help educators, researchers, and advocates explore a wealth of existing data (from the American Community Survey, the Current Population Survey, and the National Health Interview Survey, just to name a few!). These webinars will be designed and led by Census Bureau experts, and the events will be hosted through their web-based training platform. Using the tools which will be explained in this webinar series, anyone with internet access can perform free, customized data searches to support research, grant-writing, program evaluation, education, and advocacy. We look forward to continuing this webinar series and to learning both from the Census Bureau’s experts and from participant questions and feedback. The first webinar will be titled Measuring America: An Overview on Vision Disability Statistics. It will take place at 2:00 pm Eastern time on February 26th, 2015. A recording of the webinar will be posted online at a later date. Please follow this link to register in advance to receive the log-in and call-in information via email.