[Blog icon description: A round grey mouse stuffed animal with a big head. It has pink blush and the hands, feet, tail, and inside of ears are also pink]
Hi! Welcome!
I'm Rels or Spy, I use he/him and I'm an adult. My personal agere blog is @littlestspy
The age regression community on Tumblr is not very friendly to people with visual, processing, and cognitive disabilities, so I made this blog to try and educate on accessibility! I hope it is helpful to people.
Do not interact: Bigots of any kind. Untagged eyestrain / flashing (this is dangerous for me). Blogs that fetishize / make light of any disability in any way. NSFW and kink blogs.
Note: I am disabled and have issues with understanding things, communication, memory, and emotional regulation. If I am upset/not understanding your post or message, please explain in simpler words or redirect me if you're comfortable with that.
can you people stop saying mental age. no you cannot "reclaim" it if you're not intellectually disabled. The ID community has made it very clear that they do not want it used at all.
Small reminder: avoid censoring words, especially with special characters/numbers (for example K!ink, F****, s3xual). It is not necessary on tumblr, it makes it much more difficult to read, especially for people that allready struggle with reading, it messes with screen readers and it makes it way harder for people to filter out certain terms.
agere community, PLEASE please remember to tag flashing or strobing lights, pulsing gifs, etc. if you don't know if it would effect someone with epilepsy or migraines, tag it anyways just to be safe. these conditions are not jokes, and the resulting effects from seeing these things can be harmful.
if someone asks you to tag something with flashing/pulsing, do it.
this community focuses on acceptance, and epileptic / otherwise photosensitive regressors exist and want to rb agere content too! we want to be able to interact with posts and indulge in our safe space too
yknow i never noticed the sheer rareness of images having ids or alt text on this website until i started adding alt text to my art (and trying to remember to add it to any images i post in general, especially text screenshots) and that makes me kinda sad
I feel like a lot of people just don't know how to do it or are intimidated by the prospect. I was too, actually, and I couldn't find any good guides on how to do it (beyond basic formatting) and most guides boiled down to "just describe what you see and important details!" I really wanted to add alt text bc accessibility is important to me, but I would always get kinda stumped on how to do it.
But then I saw this image, I think in a discord server, and I immediately started doing it. It kinda broke the ice for me
from one little to many: please make your posts readable. please don't "typ3 l1k3 th15" (pt: type like this) to censor things. please don't fill your posts with every color on the spectrum. please don't use weird font choices. please, if you have to have a dni banner, make it contrasting and easy to read. i feel left out because there's just so much stuff i can't read.
An image description is using words to say what's happening in a picture. For example, a photo of a red ball would be described as "a red ball."
Why are they used?
Image descriptions help people who are blind or have low vision, as well as some people who have visual processing issues, to be able to know what an image is, the same way most people would with their eyes.
How do I write one?
I'm not the best person to explain, because my language issues make them difficult for me to do, so I'm using information from other websites (linked at the bottom of the post.)
Think about what's most important to you or jumps out right away when you look at the image you're describing. What is the main focus of it? If you were telling someone about it, what would you say to them?
Don't over complicate it! Use simple, easily understandable language and put the most important parts first and in the most detail. Try to keep it to 125 words or less if possible.
How do I add them to my images?
Tumblr has the ability to add descriptions to images! Click the three dots that appear on an image in a post you're making and select "add alt text." Pictures that have alt text added will have a badge that says ALT that you can click to show the text.
Can I add them to someone else's post?
You can't directly add them to an already posted image without editing the post, but you can reblog and add a description in regular text.
Do I have to do them for every image? What if I can't?
Ideally, every image would be described, but that's not always possible. You might not know how to describe something, or you might not have the energy for it. You can try reaching out to other people for help with it. If it's an image of text, like a interaction banner or a screenshot, you can put it through an image to text converter. If you can't describe it at all, tagging the post as "undescribed" can help people who need image descriptions to avoid it by filtering it out!
Very many agere posts use Tumblr's colorful text feature and fonts either from Tumblr or outside it to fit aesthetics. Unfortunately, this creates an accessibility issue for people who use screen readers, as well as many people with visual or processing disabilities who don't use screen readers.
The problems:
Screen readers read out the name of the color of the text each time it changes, which isn't a problem for the most part, BUT gradient text will make it read the color before each individual letter, which makes it basically impossible to understand what the post says.
People who have difficulty seeing, or difficulty with processing visual input, or sensitivity to visual input, may have difficulty with reading some or all colors of text. Colors close to the background color of the post can be a problem for people with low vision, and bright colors or several contrasting colors can cause pain and seizures in people with migraines and photosensitive epilepsy.
Fonts that exist in Tumblrs code (the ones that come up if you select the "Aa" button) can be processed by screen readers in the same way as colors. However, fonts from outside of Tumblr will not be recognized by most programs and may cause them to not read the post, read confusing sounds, or crash entirely. This also applies to many copy pasted aesthetic symbols, some of which will make the program try to swap between languages.
Fonts can also be a problem for other people with vision and processing issues, like dyslexia. They may not be able to read the text.
Solutions:
Simply not using colored text or fonts is the easiest solution.
However, if you would like to use them, adding a warning to the post itself and/or a content warning tag such as "cw colored text" or "cw fonts" and making a separate post that has the same content, but without colors or fonts. The accessible post can be linked at the top of the main one for easy finding by people who need it.
Thank you for reading! Questions? Comments? Requests? Feel free to reply or send asks, just keep things polite!
want talk this while kind of able to. wish agere community at least here more diverse accessible. feel so sanitized. when lux regress barely able function anymore, everything feel harder stressful but harder get care. and not see lot disable agere content. if anything agere content very inaccessible. typing quirks (not refer to misspell thing not able control, refer to how choose type) dni banners but no image id alt text or below thing, when good do both. many many moodboard outfit board no image id.
if this hard hear, encourage hear because this important: agere not just for able people/low support need people.
plain text: agere not just for able people/low support need people.
there going be disable people left out of community for coping mechanism if people keep go like this, like disable people rare enough not pay attention to. am mostly abled and still feel out of place.
and please for love of god stop use “nonverbal” if mean go mute, nonverbal people say LOT about how this not good thing do and every time see in fic or headcanon want throw something. blogs @/birdofmay @/gwydion-aacblog have more information.
not have to reblog, not bad person if not reblog, but especially if abled regressor, would really like if do reblog.
Just wanna say since as an age regressor I see alot , Stop saying you "go non verbal" / "when non verbal" etc . See abled people who just regress using this and fully verbal autistics who age regress . Stop it..and stop tagging your post as #nonverbal and #semiverbal so when I click tag I see fully verbal person in tags . Just say speech loss / losing speech etc ....I hate to make this kind of post but someone has to say it..
Making Accessible Interaction Banners - a Guide by Binoo "ChildrensWard"
Interaction or "DNI" (do not interact) banners are a staple of the age regression community, but too often are they made without taking accessibility in mind, whether it's because they're unreadable, have excessive eye strain, or aren't marked with alt text.
Therefore, in the hopes that I can help people out with this, I decided to write a mini guide on how to make your banners accessible for as many people as possible!
Under the "read more" cut, this guide will cover the following:
Fonts, and how to choose the best ones
Text, and what your interaction banners should say
Colour contrast, and why it's important in making your graphics accessible
Eye strain, and why it generally should be avoided
Alt text and image descriptions, and how to write them
And an example of an interaction banner I made using the criteria I've written in this guide!
So, without further adieu, let's get into the real meat of this guide!
Fonts
Fonts are easily the most important thing about an interaction banner! It's how you're going to best convey the contents of your banner in a way that's readable to the viewer. Here's a quick and firty rundown of the different kinds of fonts, as well as which ones you should (and shouldn't!) use for your banner:
Body Copy fonts are your basic Sans and Sans Serif style fonts that you'll most often find on books and websites, because they're some of the easiest fonts to read in smaller text (10-14pt) due to their lack of details. Examples of Body Copy fonts include PT Serif, Arial, Comic Sans, Roboto, and Helvetica Now.
Display fonts are often used for headers and subheaders and include features such as being thick, having unconventional letters, and, on occasion, being in all caps. However, these fonts should not be used for body or small text, as they will be very hard to read. Examples of Display fonts include Futura PT, Elephant, Noto Serif Display, and Shoreditch.
Script and decorative fonts are subtypes of display fonts, with the former having a handwritten quality to them, while the latter are considered to be the fun display fonts. However, you should be very careful with using either of these fonts- not only can they be hard to read on their own, but neither should be used specifically for body or small text in any circumstance. For the sake of readability and accessibility, however, I'd be more inclined to avoid using these fonts.
Text
Aside from the fonts that your text will be written in, the text itself is also a mandatory aspect of your banners. After all, it's what banners are entirely based on, and it's the very thing that tells you who can and can't interact with your posts.
However, there's something important to keep in mind, and that is how much text you're trying to cram into your banner because you're trying so desperately to fit your entire DNI criteria onto it.
What I think is important when it comes to making your banners is to keep any text you have on there as short as possible. If you bombard your banner with all this specific criteria, then you're more likely to make your readers confused, whether or not they happen to be a screen reader user.
When making your banners, ask yourself the following questions when deciding on your criteria:
How likely is it for someone interacting with the age regression or similar communities to fit this criteria? Have I come across a good number of people who fit this criteria that makes it worth mentioning?
Is this criteria at all relevant to the content I'm presenting? Do I need things like inter-community discourse terms from other communities on my banner if I'm making content specifically for age regression?
Is there any "unspoken" criteria that everyone agrees upon that doesn't need to be included? These might include nazis, racists and white supremacists, homophobes and transphobes, ableists and eugenicists, misogynists, anti-choice, etc.
If your answers show that the specific criteria is not relevant, then it's best to leave it out to keep the information on your banner more clear and concise.
Colour Contrast
While colour contrast is something often talked about in web development circles, it's also an important skill to learn when making any sort of graphic design- which is what interaction banners essentially are. Without taking colour contrast into mind, you're left with a banner that may not be easy for most people to read; let alone those with low vision or blindness. We also need to think about things like people who may be using old or outdated monitors, people reading on smaller screens (like a smart phone), and bad lighting and glare. As Contrast Rebellion puts it: aesthetics are important, but aren't the ultimate goal of design.
Okay, so you've understood the reason why colour contrast is important, but how do you put it into action? How do you know your colours of choice are readable?
Well lucky for us, there's many resources out there that help us in choosing the right colours! Here are a few of my favourites:
CSUN: Color Contrast - An introduction article on colour contrast, why it's important, and some examples of good and bad colour contrast choices.
Random A11y - If you don't have any colour combinations in mind, Random A11y is here to help! With it's vast amount of randomly generated colour contrast combinations, you'll have plenty of options to work with. Don't like the combination you're given? Just click on the "new colours" tab to generate a new palette!
Colour Contrast Analyzer - This is a free program for Windows and Mac that helps you with colour checking with a variety of different features; including multiple ways to select colours (CSS color formats, RGB slider, colour picker tool), and a colour blindness simulator.
Accessible Colors - If you don't want to or can't download the program above, then this website works just as fine with checking colours, too! Just enter in the hex codes of your colours, the font size and weight, and which level of conformance you'd like your colours to pass.
Eye strain
A bit of a sore topic for some, but I feel I must put it bluntly for people to understand: making your colours easy on the eyes of the viewer should be your top priority over your aesthetic. Some people, like myself, have certain health conditions that are triggered by eye strain, and by continuing to slap extremely contrasted rainbows on your banners, you're continuing to put disabled people through worsening symptoms, all because you feel the need to retain your aesthetic.
Many of the same resources shared in the Colour Contrast section can also help you to rule out any eye-straining palettes. Also, a general rule of thumb to keep in mind is: if a colour palette is eye straining enough to cause you some mild problems, then it's enough to cause someone with a disability more severe symptoms.
Alt text and image descriptions
I think a lot of us find writing alt text to be daunting- I know I did for a long while, which is why I never wrote any for my posts until recently. But really, once you get the hang of it, it can be very simple and easy to write! Even so, people who don't know how exactly to write alt text often fumble with this- either writing too much or too little, not being clear enough, or just copying the image caption and calling it a day.
Here's some tips and tricks on writing better alt text:
Alt text generally follows the Object-action-context rule. In the words of Alex Chen at Medium: The object is the main focus. The action describes what's happening, usually what the object is doing. The context describes the surrounding environment.
Be specific and concise, and even consider the content of the post or webpage it's on as well. You'll also want to consider the function or purpose of the image, and what you want your viewers to gain from it.
Keep your alt text short, as long descriptions with too much flowery language and filler words can be distracting when using a screen-reader. Generally, most screen-readers will cut off alt text at around 125 characters.
Avoid using "image of..." or "picture of...," as HTML codes will already identify your images as such. However, in this case, mentioning what type of image it is can add context.
Always check for spelling mistakes, as this can affect the user experience, causing interruptions and confusion.
Not related to interaction banners specifically, but avoid including alt text for decorative images that are used to make your post prettier. In this case, insert the word "null" in your alt text fields.
Image descriptions are a little different in the fact that they're allowed to be more descriptive than alt text, considering screen readers won't be able to cut off any alt text at 125 characters. Even so, it's still best to keep your image descriptions as short as possible to save from redundancy and confusion.
Please remember that writing alt text and image descriptions can take a lot of practice and trial-and-error, so don't give up if you can't get it right the first time! Write and rewrite it as much as you need to, or even consider changing your interaction banner altogether if you think it can't be described in words concisely.
An example
Taking what we've learned above, let's take this banner I made just for this post as an example of these characteristics put into action.
In this example, I have chosen the hex colour #4D0000 for my text colour, and the colours #B5F3DC and #E3B158 for my background. According to CCA, the contrast ratios for my colours of choice are 12.8:1 and 7.9:1 respectfully, which both meet the minimum contrasts of 1.4.3 for AA and 1.4.6 for AAA.
I have chosen the font FS Lola Bold, which is a type of display font that's best for headers and subheaders, but not so much any body or small text. I don't have to worry about this though, because I don't have any small text in my banner.
I've also kept my criteria to a simple "No DDLG/CGL interaction," because I feel that this is the most relevant information regarding the content of my blog and the posts I make. Short and simple, yet specific to who I don't want interacting with me. I also like the idea of my favourite fictional characters protecting my blog, which is why I've included another short sentence for it!
Here's an example of what the image description or alt text for this banner could look like:
[Image description: Banner that reads "Toopy and Binoo protect this blog, no DDLG/CGL interaction!" On it are the titular characters from the show. /End ID]
And if I were to have both alt text alongside an image description, then the alt text could be as simple as what the banner reads, which would be:
"Toopy and Binoo protect this blog, no DDLG/CGL interaction!"
Remember, you don't have to go into every little detail with your image descriptions or alt text, because then it can become very confusing for certain people to decipher! Keep it simple and state the minimum.
Closing words
I think that's everything that I wanted to cover in this post. Of course, there's more to accessible design than just text and fonts alone, but when it comes to interaction banners, it's usually the focal point of the images, which is why it's so vital that people with disabilities can also read your banner- especially when they contain important information about your personal boundaries.
Age regressors often pride themselves for the image we've set up for our community, that it's safe for everyone to join and no one will be judged or excluded for who their are. But the reality is, we still have lots of work to do before we're ever at that place, and making our community more accessible is just one of these steps that we should all be encouraged to take. Besides, what kind of message are we sending if we don't take the steps to make our space as accessible as possible? How do you think it'd feel to realize that a community you wanted to join is actively hostile towards you because of the refusal to learn how to accommodate for them? Especially when we have such a huge demographic of disabled people in the community, we can and should be doing better to accommodate for everyone as much as we possibly can.
Learning accessibility is a skill that requires time and practice, and I don't expect anyone to be perfect at it the first time around. The aim of doing these things isn't to make sure that every single thing is 100% accessible in every single way imaginable and with no mistakes whatsoever; but to instead encourage, develop, and incorporate good accessibility practices into our every day lives.
