#I'm trying alt text for this post but if it didn't work I'll just paste the image desc at the bottom

[manhattan-gamestop]

Everyday I wake up and just feel so old

[princess-of-purple-prose]

Hi there! Please take a look at accessiblepublishing dot ca's guide to image description. There's a few mistakes in your transcribing and since you're sharing templates for other people to copy and paste, these mistakes are just going to multiply. A couple in particular I've noticed are: overly lengthy/confusing descriptors, paragraph breaks, restating plain text (screen readers already read plain text), restating audio, using styles in post, and using personal opinion in descriptors. It's great that you want to help make things more accessible, but please work to standardize your descriptors if you're going to be instructing others.

Hi, anon!! I really appreciate the feedback!! First, I actually have been dragging my feet for ages on fixing our earliest descriptions on the meme templates doc, so I will take this as my push to pare some of them down and make them clearer! I'll do my best to respond to everything here, going under the assumption that you mostly mean the descriptions I post on Tumblr rather than the ones on the doc:

Overly lengthy descriptors: I'm always working on this! I imagine my biggest offense on this is for comic IDs, but I generally intend for those to convey some manner of the style and flow of the art. I would actually appreciate being sent feedback on specific offenders if you want to show me where I've gone wrong!

Paragraph breaks: I write IDs as intended for plain text rather than alt, generally, but alt on Tumblr supports line breaks anyway. (The meme doc was also aimed for plain text, given the "ID: / End ID" formatting.) As I have seen a few sources saying paragraph breaks aid readability and I (a sighted person) definitely can't read long blocks of text, and I don't think I'm going to stop using paragraph breaks. I'm genuinely sorry if this is an inconvenience, but it is always okay to take my IDs and edit them as necessary if they don't measure up! (Also, I swear to god I don't say this to be petty, I'm trying to cover my bases because I haven't seen paragraph breaks being advised against in descriptions before: the accessiblepublishing guide also uses paragraph breaks in its examples for alt text? Do you have reasoning or other sources to explain why paragraph breaks are bad?)

Plain text: I take cues from posts like this one on plain text! Tl;dr, plain text is still important for low vision users who may not use screenreaders, and screenreaders also can struggle with special fonts or gradient text, so it's worth adding transcripts

Restating audio: I'm... not sure what this means? Are you talking about audio transcriptions? I will take advice on those if given, sorry I didn't catch your meaning!

Styles: I try very hard to use fully plain text except bold fonts for IDs, with the very occasional phrase in caps lock or italics, and wasn't aware I was overusing formatting otherwise? The people's accessibility server once advised my friend and me on doing a series of long comic descriptions and generally stated that bold was the most readable kind of special formatting, so that's what I go for. I'll keep an eye on it!

Personal opinions: I'll keep an eye on this as well, thanks for letting me know! (I'd thought I was doing a good job, do you have examples for me to look over?)

Sorry this was so long, I wanted to be thorough! Thanks again anon, I am always open to feedback on my descriptions!! Have a great day!!!

[ihavetoomuchhomeworkforthis]

Ok so I have TRIED to find the post so I can give credit, but I haven't been able to and idk how else to go about finding it. I'm sorry.

While I was browsing the "middle surgery" posts (to try to find it), I ended up typing basically everything I wanted to write into the comments of one of those, so I'll just copy and paste that here I guess? Maybe I'll edit it just a little. Maybe not.

First off, explanation and disclaimer: If you don't have a binder or access to HRT, or maybe only want to cosplay/crossdress - this won't work for everyone, and the people who this does apply to probably won't see it - but I thought of a way to sort of masculinize my body shape, and maybe this will help somebody else.

(this is meant for anyone with smallish boobs [or a binder] and whose waist goes inwards a bit at the sides because that second point is what's being changed, I apologize if you don't feel like it works for you) you will need a tight and stretchy tank top, some socks, and ideally a sports bra.

Basically what we're going for, alt text available, is this:

ok (sorry for the inevitable tone difference) copy/pasting starts here: vvv

ok no but I saw a post about - I wish I could credit it, I'm trying to find it, that's why I m browsing this tag - someone who had - I swear this is relevant - someone who had wanted a ken Barbie but didn't have one so they decided to make one of their Barbies into a guy so that they could make their Barbies have a heterosexual romance, which is really funny all on its own, but the point is that they decided to do this not by cutting off the Barbie's boobs

(because how, they were probably like 5 or 7 or something at the time, they wouldn't have gone for heating up a knife or anything) but by instead wrapping and taping around the middle of the Barbie until its belly was even with its boobs: middle surgery.

and also they cut off the hair too I think. - I really want to find a Barbie so I can make it trans lol - And anyway so I thought it was actually kind of reasonable, so you know what you can do if you happen to have small boobs but your waist cuts in femininely? You can put on a sports bra (or binder if you have one) and then you can fold a long sock in half and tuck it halfway under your bra to even out your belly with your boobs,

and then you can put on a stretchy and tight tank top, and you can lift up one side and put a smaller sock where your waist cuts in there, like an ankle sock, experiment with the best way to fold it or if you want two socks or whatever but that's to fill in the gap that makes your body not rectangular, and then you carefully put the undershirt back down over it so as not to dislodge the sock, and also to hold it in place, and then very carefully do the same on the other side

and Ta-Da! Middle Surgery. Now you will fill out more masculine clothing better, and generally have a more masculine shape! Maybe a bit lumpy though, so put on either layers or baggy things maybe. Also obviously this doesn't apply to all body types and you might not have the things. It worked for me yesterday and today though! It was pretty neat, 10/10 would recommend.