A Picture Is Worth the Thousand Words
For most of us, the web is a magical world of media rich content like images, gifs and most importantly, cat videos. Images, however humorous, are the primary means of maintaining user engagement online. Unfortunately, for many users with disabilities and/or other impairments, this rich visual heavy experience of the web remains inaccessible. Assistive devices like screen readers and refreshable braille displays can only interpret text and rely on developers adding alt-text or captions to make sense of images. Though this type of content is hard to parse, low vision users should not be predisposed to a text only web experience. For one, not all low vision users are blind. Many, like sighted users, can benefit from the added semantic meaning that images and video provide. As a result, as developers it is important to account for the range of abilities and adjust our media content appropriately. ...