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saintbleeding · 3 months

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do you have any advice for writing image descriptions? I’ve been wanting to add some to my art but I don’t know how to go about it

hello anon!!! that’s a wonderful thing to want to do and im happy to offer whatever help i can :3

so because image descriptions are very much a community effort, that does also mean there isn’t really a style guide or anything, which can be freeing but also quite intimidating! here are some kinda off the top of my head suggestions:

If ur comfier putting the ID in alt text than the post body, that is still much MUCH better than no ID at all (and side note, if someone copy+pastes ur id into a reblog, it’s not a suggestion that you did anything wrong, they’re just trying to make them maximally accessible. while a lot of ppl who need IDs will use screenreaders and will prefer alt text, there are ppl whose preference is plain text in the body of the post (i personally fall into this category))

similarly, if you are struggling to write an ID/don’t have the energy/etc, i cannot recommend People’s Accessibility on discord highly enough. there are some wonderful folks in there who can give you pointers or even write IDs for you! likewise, i can’t speak on others’ behalf but i’ve gladly written IDs for ppl’s posts before they’ve put them up before, and i’m happy to do so, even if we havent interacted before! you can shoot me a DM with the image you need described and i’m glad to assist

more specifically:

it’s good practice to include the name of the fandom and the characters, assuming it’s fanart. altho it’s likely that fanart will stay broadly within a circle where people are familiar with the source material, there may be ppl who encounter the post and wouldn’t know this detail without it being laid out explicitly

you’re welcome to mention whichever details you like, especially if you are the artist, because you know what’s important to the image as a whole. it’s also perfectly acceptable not to get super detailed on things like clothing/hairstyles, especially if they aren’t relevant to what’s going on

a good rule of thumb is to ask yourself, if you didn’t have the image in front of you and just had the description, would it be a true representation of what the image looks like/portrays? would your mental image be accurate? that’s what you’re shooting for.

the best advice i can give is to just dive in and start, bc it gets a lot less intimidating once you’ve done a few, and it also gets easier the more you do it :3

also, i think trying to follow ppl who describe images helps a lot, because you will get more passive exposure to descriptions and what you think works/doesn’t, which can improve your own ID writing! on that note, highly recommend @princess-of-purple-prose/@pathos-logical (kay is a pillar of this and every community tbqh), @ryutarotakedown, @lucky-numberme, @fox-guardian, @squeeneyart, @hotdrinks, @samwise1548, and @rq-described (a breadth of interests represented here, but also if you’re asking me i presume you have at least a passing interest in audio drama and adjacent :3 )

thanks so much for asking and as i said i’m always happy to help however i can!!! happy describing, i believe in you!!!

#asks #anon #i hope this is a little helpful!!!#i just try to follow as many folks who do ids as i can and learn by osmosis tbqh #this also delighted me very much :3

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