Twitter rolls out ALT badges and exposed image descriptions globally

Representative Image

Twitter on April 8 rolled out ALT badges and exposed image descriptions globally. In a tweet, the company said that they spent the last month gathering feedback and improving the experience with a limited test group.

As promised, the ALT badge and exposed image descriptions go global today.

Over the past month, we fixed bugs and gathered feedback from the limited release group. We're ready. You're ready. Let's describe our images! Here's how: https://t.co/bkJmhRpZPghttps://t.co/ep1ireBJGt

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— Twitter Accessibility (@TwitterA11y) April 7, 2022

Last month, Twitter rolled the feature to three percent of users on Android, iOS and the web. Alt text aka Alternate text is an accessibility feature that helps people who use screen readers or speech-to-text. Twitter wants to make it easier for people to see what images do or don't have alt text.

Starting today, the social media platform will make it easier to see what images have alt text with a large ALT badge on them, in the bottom left corner. If you hover over the image, you can read the alt text. Alternatively, you can also click on the badge to do so.

Also Read: Elon Musk's arrival stirs fears among some Twitter employees

These descriptions are user-generated, which means they will have to be manually input for each image uploaded. Twitter has also shared a guide to get you started on adding alt text to images. Descriptions can also be added to retweeted images.

The badge will be represented with "a black rectangle with the white letters A L T, spelling ALT, will appear on images with an image description."