Twitter Updates Various Textual Content Descriptions with On-Picture Badge and Expandable Captions

For vision-impaired users, Twitter is testing some improvements to its picture alt-text descriptions, including a new 'ALT' flag on images with alternative text descriptions and an expanded description window to make them more accessible.

As you can see, the new option places a greater emphasis on alt-text data, with a mini-window appearing when you hit the 'ALT' indicator, highlighting the additional information. For reference, Twitter's alt-text descriptions can now be seen in-stream, but not in any specialized, stylized manner.

The new interface would make alt-text descriptions much easier to utilize, increasing their value to a broader range of users while boosting overall accessibility. Since 2016, Twitter has provided alt-text on images, and it is aiming to make it easier for people to submit text descriptions to increase accessibility for all users.

These enhancements were made as part of the platform's broader accessibility initiatives, which included adding auto-captions to videos and improving in-app layouts and fonts to comply with accessibility guidelines. Upgraded alt-text will be a great feature, however, it is currently under testing.

Twitter claims that the new capabilities will be available to 3% of Twitter users on Android, iOS, and the Web. Before deciding on a wider rollout of the update, Twitter will evaluate the results of this initial test pool, which is expected to happen in April.