Instagram Now Lets You Describe Your Photos

Descriptions for people who cannot see the photo

Instagram announced two changes yesterday for people who use screen readers, the software that reads a phone's screen aloud for blind and partially sighted users.

The first is automatic. Instagram now uses object recognition to generate a description of each photo, a list of things it may contain, which screen readers read out in the feed, Explore and profiles.

The second is in your hands. Accounts can now write their own description of a photo, known as alt text, giving screen reader users something richer than the automatic version.

For a business account, the second change is worth a minute on every post.

Who relies on it

Every iPhone and most Android phones have a screen reader built in: VoiceOver on the iPhone, TalkBack on Android. People who use them scroll, follow and buy on Instagram much as anyone else does.

They include customers who lost their sight later in life and still follow the shops they always visited, and people with partial sight who zoom in and listen at once.

Without a description, the photograph, often the whole point of the post, does not reach them.

What the automatic version can do

Object recognition is good at categories. It can say a photo may contain a hat, a person, food or the outdoors.

It cannot say which hat, in what colour, from which collection, or why this one is in the post. It cannot read the sign in the window, or know that the person in the picture is your new apprentice.

And it can simply be wrong, since a guess made from shapes and colours is still a guess.

For a business whose photographs show its products, that is the difference between a description and a list of possibilities.

What a good description includes

• The subject, named the way a customer would name it.
• The details that matter: colour, material, size, finish.
• Any words that appear in the picture itself.
• The setting, when it adds something, such as the shop window.
• What people are doing, rather than how they look.

The third is the one most often missed. A photograph of a sign, a poster or a sale graphic carries its message in words, and without those words in the description a listener gets the frame and not the point.

Where the setting is

When posting, the option sits on the last screen, where the caption is written. Tap Advanced Settings at the bottom, then Write Alt Text, and type the description.

For photos already on the account, look under Edit in the post's menu, where the app may offer the same option.

If neither is there yet, update the app on the phone that does the posting.

Sighted followers never see the description, so it can be plain and practical rather than polished.

Short and specific

One sentence is usually right, two at most. Screen reader users hear every word, and a long description of a simple photo wastes their time.

Skip phrases like image of or picture of. The screen reader already announces that it has reached an image.

Do not repeat the caption, which is read out as well. The description should supply what the caption assumes the reader can see.

Write it as a plain sentence, in the same language as the caption.

A worked example

A hat shop on a heritage block downtown posts its new arrivals most weeks: fedoras, flat caps, wool toques, and wide-brimmed sun hats in spring.

This morning the owner tried the new setting on the week's posts. The first drafts repeated the caption and added the hashtags, which a screen reader user would already have heard.

The versions that went up were plainer. One reads: a charcoal felt fedora with a narrow black band, on a wooden hat block in the shop window.

Another describes a photograph of the window sign, so it includes the sign's words: winter hours, open Sundays from noon.

A note by the till now reminds whoever posts to write the description before the caption, while they are still looking at the photograph.

What to leave out

Hashtags, keywords and calls to action. The description is not a second caption, and filling it with tags makes it longer without making it clearer.

Emoji, which screen readers read out by name, and jokes that only work if you can see the picture.

Judgements about people's bodies or looks. Describe what a person is doing, and use names only when they have agreed to be named.

And the business name in every description, since the account name is already announced with each post.

Posts that are mostly words

Graphics made of text, such as an announcement or a quotation, are the hardest case. Object recognition sees an image with writing on it and little else.

Write the graphic's words into the description, and put the essential ones in the caption too, so they can be read at any size.

Better still, post fewer of them. A photograph of the real thing, with the facts in the caption, serves everyone.

Beyond Instagram

Twitter has offered image descriptions for some time, switched on in its accessibility settings, and Facebook has generated automatic descriptions of its own for a while.

The website's images need the same care: product photographs, the team page, the banner on the home page. The habit carries straight over, and a site's alt text is also read by search engines.

The counter-case

Not every image needs a careful description. A purely decorative photograph adds little, and the automatic version may be enough for a picture of the sky over the shop.

An account posting once a month may decide to describe only its product photographs.

But any post whose photograph carries the point, such as a product, a sign or an event poster, deserves one specific sentence. Without it, part of the audience gets the caption and nothing else.

Starting with the next post

1. Update the Instagram app on the posting phone.
2. Find Advanced Settings on the caption screen.
3. Write the description before the caption.
4. Name the subject and the details that matter.
5. Include any words shown in the picture.
6. Leave out hashtags and emoji.
7. Describe your best older posts where the app allows.

Step three is the habit that makes it stick. Written first, while the photograph is still on the screen, the description takes a minute; left until after the caption, it gets skipped.

Fewer posts leave time for this kind of care, the trade-off argued in posting less and answering more.

Frequently asked questions

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