Specsavers hits out at ALT image trend for misusing accessibility features
Popular high street eyecare brand Specsavers is known for its humorous adverts poking fun at glasses wearers who "should have gone to Specsavers".
The brand's online presence is usually quick to hop on trends and engage in cultural conversation but one Twitter meme has caught the company's eye - and for the wrong reasons.
On Twitter, people have been posting an image which simply reads "click here", on a white background, with an arrow to where the image ALT text can be accessed. Instead of a description, there is a joke or a punchline to the tweet, which Specsavers criticised.
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In the ALT text, Specsavers wrote: "The image says "click here" with an arrow pointing to the ALT description tag in the bottom left corner.
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"Side note for everybody: Many Twitter users, including brands, have been using this to prompt people to open the ALT text, where they have left a joke.
"ALT text is a hugely important accessibility tool designed to help people navigate the internet more easily, so it shouldn't be used as a punchline. This is especially true if the ALT text doesn't describe the image, leaving blind and visually impaired people out of the joke."
Alternative text, known as ALT text, provides visually impaired users a description of the image which can be used in collaboration with accessibility features like screen readers.
The Twitter trend has been used by various users and some brands to tell daft jokes, hidden from initial view to those who are not visually impaired.
The problem comes from the joke overriding the alternative description, with people omitting the picture's description entirely - excluding the blind and visually impaired users.
Responding to Specsavers, the Royal National Institute of Blind People wrote: "Exactly this. Thanks for reminding everyone."
Others had been calling out the trend too and one person said: "If you're a social media manager thinking of using ALT text as a way to be funny... Please don't. ALT text is used to describe the image for visually impaired users."
Disabled activist Jeffie Plays added: "It seems to be happening more and more often that brands think it's okay to misuse alt text like this. Alt text is an accessibility tool and this is ableism."
Some defended the trend, calling it "harmless" and arguing that visually impaired users would still be in on the joke as all they'd miss would be the "click here" of the picture.
One said: "I feel like it doesn't make much of a difference tho [sic], obviously it's not the intended use, but anyone using a screen reader will just get the message read out and it wouldn't really make much difference is the message was in alt text or just in the tweet."
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In response to this another person explained that it perpetuates the misuse of accessibility features, which could harm disabled users in the long term even if the joke trend is harmless.
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