If you’re a longtime reader of my blog, you know I’ve been asking online publishers for years to improve the accessibility of their images, videos, and audio.
From asking people to caption videos, add alternative text to their images, and transcripts to their podcasts, I’ve focused on educating others about creating media everyone can access.
I’ve published posts on
- How to add alternative text to Twitter
- Buffer’s support for image alternative text
- Hootsuite’s image alternative text on desktop
Years ago, I published a series on video captioning.
And I’ve shared two stories of colleagues acting upon my recommendations to add transcripts to their podcast and captions to their videos.
Which is why when two organizations act within one week of my suggestions, it’s time to celebrate!
Read on about the two accessibility wins I’m celebrating.
Where is the Alternative Text?
A popular appointment scheduling plugin for WordPress, Simply Schedule Appointments tweeted three helpful tips for their users to book more client appointments.
Their tweet included a lovely illustrated image, with no alternative text.
Our 3 tips on how to book more loyal clients 🙏 Here are some easy ways to reduce no-shows and help you book more appointments! #wordpress pic.twitter.com/EI94DZOr1J
— Simply Schedule Appointments 🦊 (@ssappts) December 1, 2021
Here’s the text content in the image:
Make sure all of your clients know you offer text confirmations and reminders. The more that sign-up for this, the more no-shows you can avoid!
Put a call to action in every social media and blog post. Clients need to know that you’re welcoming bookings and how easy it is to do so – “Book Today!”
Collect up-front payments – this makes your meeting official. Even if it’s just a small deposit, your customer will take it more seriously and be less likely to no-show.
But without alternative text for the image, people who were blind or had low vision couldn’t access the tips.
When I replied to Simply Schedule Appointments about the lack of alternative text, why it mattered, and a link to my article on adding alternative text, I didn’t get a response.
That’s often the case, when I reply on Twitter about missing image alternative text.
However, this week, I received a reply from them that had me smiling.
@redcrew sorry for the missing alt text on the image. Our social media team received an a11y crash course this last week and we’ll be better about this moving forward. We appreciate you bringing this up, it’s definitely important to push for internet accessibility for all!
— Simply Schedule Appointments 🦊 (@ssappts) December 7, 2021
An apology and more: their social media team took action to learn more about accessibility by taking a crash course.
And Simply Schedule Appointments committed to doing better in the future.
I thanked them for their response and update about their plans to improve.
Based on my past experience asking about missing image alternative text, I’ve never had a person or organization reply back about learning more about accessibility and being committed to do better.
Accessibility win number 1!
Where are the Captions?
When Balsamiq, creators of the popular wireframing tool, promoted their YouTube interview with Mozilla content designer Betsy Mikel about the Firefox browser redesign process, I was intrigued.
Redesigns are notoriously problematic; I’m always interested in how teams approach issues with content and information architecture.
But when I visited Balsamiq’s YouTube video, I quickly discovered it had autocaptions.
I contacted Leon Barnard at Balsamiq on Twitter and asked for real captions to be added to the video, explaining their autocaptions weren’t correct and were one long sentence.
Barnard replied quickly and within one day updated me with the information the video was now captioned.
Which was great news!
One day turnaround to captions videos is not typical for organizations.
Except when I started watching the video, I noticed timing of the captions didn’t match the spoken word.
Not uncommon when someone get captions from a third-party vendor or uses automatic captions, without confirming and editing the timing.
Again, I notified Barnard.
Thanked him for the quick action and recommended someone check the caption timing.
The next day, Barnard graciously thanked me and said they fixed the timing.
And they were starting a project on video captions.
Thanks again! We just made another fix and hopefully all is right now. We’re starting a project to review and improve all of our captions.
— Leon Barnard (@balsamiqLeon) December 1, 2021
Again, another organization committed to improving accessibility of their published content.
Accessibility win number 2!
Wrapping Up
When two organizations act within one week of my suggestions to improve their inaccessible content, it’s time to celebrate accessibility wins.
I’ve learned over the years that small steps make a difference when it comes to improving web accessibility. People and organizations aren’t always aware of their inaccessible content.
Until you mention it to them and provide information on how to improve it.
Take time to celebrate when people and organizations take action to improve accessibility!
Have you had similar results when you asked for image alternative text or video captions? Share your experiences in the comments.
