An Open Apology to Heather Lee

Along with a huge thank you for making me aware of how I can improve my Medium posts with the alt text on photos

This entire Medium story is dedicated to Heather Lee, a new writer on Medium. It contains a big “I’m sorry, I didn’t think about that”, along with an even bigger “Thank you for making me aware of this issue!”’

And don’t worry about me calling her out like this. I asked first and received Heather’s permission to mention her in this story.

And a short word from our sponsor. Since I mentioned Heather is recently new here on Medium, let’s go share some Medium love with her and give her a follow and check out her stories.

We now return you to the regularly scheduled broadcast…

This situation I’m talking about here is the use of ‘alt text’, or alternative text, that accompanies the photos we use in our Medium stories. Or should I say, in my instance, the alt text that I sometimes use, and the alt text that I often don’t use.

When I first started writing on Medium last August, I used a lot of pictures from Pixabay. It’s a free use image site, so I didn’t worry about crediting the photos that I used. But when I started submitting to a few publications, I quickly found that the publications wanted writers to properly credit where the pictures came from.

I got better at remembering to do that.

Usually.

Then, I finally figured out how to use Unsplash as I was working with new stories. Thankfully Unsplash automatically credits the photo image that we pick, making it much easier to use.

After that, I saw that many writers were using ‘Author Image’ or ‘Image by Author’ on their own photos, so I began using that on my own photos.

Usually.

But there were instances I forgot. Not intentionally, but in my furor of trying to edit and get a story polished and published, I sometimes missed an image.

I didn’t realize this until Heather Lee asked me a question a few days ago.

I’d published a story about all the monks in my life. (I’ll link it here, and on purpose to highlight this article, I haven’t gone back to edit and correct the story’s images.)

I used three images in this story.

The first was a meme I’d seen on Facebook, which started my decluttering project which turned out to inspire the story. Since the meme was credited to The Simplicity Habit, I credited the source and mentioned where I found it.

The second image I used was three books I found, all with ‘MONK’ in the title, that I’d found in my decluttering. I posted the image I’d taken of all three books. And didn’t post any image credit.

The third image I used was also my own, showing the many dog-earred pages in my copy of Think Like a Monk, by Jay Shetty. On this one I remembered to use ‘Author image’ in the alt text.

In the story I mentioned finding the three books with MONK in the title. I went on to mention how well used and dog-earred Think Like a Monk was, and that would be the first book of the three that I was going to re-read.

I never mentioned the other two books by title in the text of the story. I didn’t even think about it, because, after all, there they were displayed in the picture of all three books.

And then, I got a message which changed the way I’m thinking about pictures now.

Heather Lee clapped for So Many Monks in my Life, then responded with a question:

What were the other two books? I am blind so if they were just pictures without alt text I missed them. Thank you.

What?

That was something that had never, ever, ever crossed my mind.

I thought I’d probably just put ‘Author image’ in the alt text. But when I went back to the story I realized that I hadn’t written anything.

Nada.

Zilch.

Which didn’t seem important, because the three books are right there — visible to anyone. Anyone with sight that is. To be honest, I hadn’t thought of how many people can read and access sources such as this without the vision to be reading the words.

And for that lack of awareness, I apologize to Heather and to anyone else that may be ‘reading’ these stories via a different method.

This is how I should have used a few words of alt text to further describe the photo.

It also made me think about the Unsplash images I’ve been using. Sometimes as I’m doing dishes, or eating dinner, I use the audible button on the stories to listen to them instead of reading them while my hands are occupied with other tasks.

I know that the audible function reads the story — including the alt text giving credit.

So, for instance, on the photo below that I’ve used in one of my draft stories, the alt text list is this — and this is what it will read aloud.

Photo by Moriah Wolfe on Unsplash

That’s nice. The proper photo credit is given.

But what that doesn’t do is explain the picture.

If Heather reads the story in the future, she’ll hear those words. But what she WILL NOT KNOW, is what the photograph is about.

She won’t be able to see the unique stone staircase etched out of the rock canyon walls on either side.

This is how I’ve gone back to add more to the alt text for a better description of what the photo looks like.

Now that I know this, it’s changed the way I think about the photos I’m using.

When I published a story earlier, I wanted a ‘high-five’ picture. I found a cute picture on Unsplash to use. The alt text would have simply read:

Photo by Jonas Vincent on Unsplash

But that’s not going to help Heather out, or any of the other blind readers here on Medium.

It took about — what — twenty seconds — to add a few words to the front of the text so that the image now reads:

High five Photo with a person’s hand and kitty paw Photo by Jonas Vincent on Unsplash

I know we’re all busy. We’re all rushing. We’re trying to write and publish stories. We’re trying to read, and clap, and comment. We’re all dealing with our ‘real life’ besides Medium. We’re often fitting our Medium writing and reading into the small pieces of our life we can find here and there.

But if taking an extra minute or two, maybe three, to each story we publish where we add a brief description to each photo we use can help out some of our readers, isn’t that a good thing?

I know for myself, as I try to incorporate ‘joy’ into my daily life, this will be important for me. Because sharing joy with someone else is just as important as having it in our own life.

I’m going to try harder to do this.

I’m not going to promise that I’ll remember every single time. But for Heather, and others that are trying to read our Medium stories with diminished eyesight, or other problems which make it necessary to use the audible feature, I’m going to try very hard to remember to add a few extra words describing the picture I’m using.

You can follow my publications here: GOOD VIBES CLUB (Joy and Positivity), WRITER’S ZEN (Writing) or AS THE PAGE TURNS (Fiction)

Join Medium for just $5 a month and access unlimited stories — never worry about the three-story per month limit again! Your subscription supports amazing writers and me. It won’t cost you any extra, but I will earn a referral commission.