So, Original Poster, your picture, meme, video, audio or post got a description. Here are some explanations for you: What are descriptions / ID / VD / AD?
A description is a text that describes what appears or happens on something. That something is in image, video or audio form. Lately, there are also transcriptions of text into simple text form that originally were in fancy fonts, colors, gradients or italics. That’s why you can find Audio Description, Image Description or Video Description, also shortened as ID, AD or VD. They are accessibility tools, just like ramps, lifts or electric escalators are.
Why are they a thing?
Because many people can’t have access to the content by itself. The description translates the content to a text form that’s accessible. Blind people can’t see a picture; deaf people can’t hear audio; some neurodivergent people have trouble understanding complex pictures, pictures with tiny text or unspaced text; people with slow internet won’t load pictures, videos or even audio; screen readers have trouble reading text with color gradient... but they will be able to read (or have a screen reader read aloud) a description. This isn’t a complete list, there are many more people with different circumstances or conditions that use descriptions. If you don’t provide them, they will be left out of the content because they can’t access said content.
What should I do?
You can do many things. For starters, you looked at this post because someone reblogged a description for your content.
Here’s what you do: 1. Copy the description. If you want to correct something (like the character’s name, or it came from this series, not that one, or the name of the hat is actually this, not that...), you can do it, after all, you are the one that created that content or the one that has more context and information about that content, you will know better what needs to be said. 2. Open the original post and select the “Edit” option. 3. Paste the description right below the content it describes.
4. Don’t put it in a small or fancy font, don’t put it in italics and don’t put it under a “Read More”. That makes it inaccessible, defeating the point of the description.
5. (Optional) If you want you can credit the user that made the description, but it’s not crucial since most of the time we do not care about credit, we care about making things accessible.
If you aren’t sure, you can ask them directly, they will be more than willing to help you or answer any questions to make your content actually accessible.
6. Save the changes.
7. Reblog the edited post.
You should do this instead of reblogging because Tumblr isn’t an optimal website or app and a lot of times reblogs and comments don’t appear in the notes. Putting the description on the original post will ensure that the content will be found immediately with a description.
At the beginning I compared descriptions with ramps, lifts and electric escalators. Following this comparison, all accessibility tools need to be easy to access, not hidden, not behind barriers; they should be accessed with minimal effort. Descriptions are the same, putting them behind read mores or leaving them in the notes is putting them behind barriers that make it more difficult to access to them.
Can I do anything else?
After these seven steps there are even more things you can do. Don’t be afraid because you’ve never done it. Practise is what will make you better at it and people won’t be mad at you for learning and trying. Start writing your own descriptions for all the posts you make, tag the ones that don’t have any descriptions (#not described, #undescribed, #needs id), ask for descriptions in the People’s Accessibility Discord or simply make a call for describers.
