I was having a clear out of notes and bookmarks and came across a news item on TikTok releasing new alt text features.
Part of me was thinking how cool it was to be using AI for creating alt text. I've been using ChatGPT to generate alt text of images, (and yes, I check it for accuracy) and it works well. It explains the images in a much better way than I ever do. It also somewhat frees my time and mind up. The down side is needing to use ChatGPT, ideally this stuff should be built into the software we use.
The article is from back in May 2025, but what I originally gawked as what they said they had only just released alt text for images "a few weeks ago". This means it didn't even have the basic accessibility standard of alt text until 2025?
"TikTok introduced support for ALT text for photos a few weeks ago, allowing creators to provide descriptive text for photos to help users with screen readers understand the visual content through spoken descriptions."
It also mentioned Instagram had AI alt text since 2018, I'm not sure I believe that tbh. It might well be true, I'm not really debating that, but what I do know I've struggled to even find the alt text option in Instagram. I never remember seeing any handy AI alt text options. Who knows, maybe it was there all along. 🤷🏻♀️
But then this thought made me think about Bluesky, they do a thing I love. In the user settings you can make it so that you can't post anything to Bluesky without alt text. This is the one thing that has kept me consistent with creating alt text and ensuring accessibility. I literally can't post an image without alt text.
None of these solutions have been implemented perfectly. I love the Bluesky forcing of alt text option. Yet I wish it generated suggested alt text. With TikTok, I never post anything there, so I can't really comment on the experience.
In the MoTaverse, for Memories, Alt text is a required field. Is our user experience perfect? No, far from it. There are a whole list of things I'd love to do. But our capacity is limited.
Is it disappointing that alt text for TikTok took so long? Definitely.
But usually, not always, but when we care and advocate, we'll improve over time. Priorities are juggled. Decisions are made. Software is complex.
Quality takes time. As users we may not always understand the reason certain things don't get shipped, as co-creators we can do our best to advocate for whatever is best within our capacity.
