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Hootsuite and Twitter image descriptions

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From: Bourne, Sarah (MASSIT)
Date: Aug 24, 2016 11:53AM

Cross-posting from a government web mailing list. And I'm not going to apologize for it.
At the end of March, Twitter finally added the ability to add alternative text for images. (See Making images accessible for people on Twitter<https://support.twitter.com/articles/20174660?lang=en> to learn how.) They also added it to their API<https://blog.twitter.com/2016/alt-text-support-for-twitter-cards-and-the-rest-api> for third-party developers, but not all of them have started using it. Unfortunately (since we use it here in the Commonwealth) Hootsuite has not yet done so. When we spoke to them about it, they said that "feature" requests are based on how many people ask for it. Imagine that: equal access is subject to a popularity contest!
If you are a Hootsuite user (or even better, a paying customer) and want to make your official social media posts on Twitter accessible, I suggest contacting them about it. Your votes on the following Hootsuite Feedback Forum entries would also help. (Note that the first one was started in 2014!)

* provide an option for adding text alternatives, such as title and long description, to tweeted images<https://feedback.hootsuite.com/forums/40182--hootsuite-com-web-dashboard/suggestions/5923569--provide-an-option-for-adding-text-alternatives>
* allow users to schedule Tweets with image descriptions for accessibility by the blind using Twitter's "Add Description" feature.<https://feedback.hootsuite.com/forums/40182--hootsuite-com-web-dashboard/suggestions/13542147-allow-users-to-schedule-tweets-with-image-descript>
sb
Sarah E. Bourne
Director of IT Accessibility, MassIT
Commonwealth of Massachusetts
1 Ashburton Pl. rm 811 Boston MA 02108
617-626-4502
<EMAIL REMOVED> <mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> >
http://www.mass.gov/MassIT