Instagram announced this week some changes to the app to help users make their posts more accessible to those with visual impairments who use screen reader technologies to navigate the web.
What’s more interesting, and what Facebook has apparently been doing for years quietly, is that if there is no alt text attached to the post, Instagram will use their object recognition technology to work out what the post is about and give that description instead.
Soon you’ll be able to add alt text to both new and existing images, but if you don’t have the time to go through your thousands of older images, then the automatic text should (hopefully!) do a good enough job.
We have posted previously about how bloggers can improve their blogs accessibility and why it’s so important so this is a really useful addition.
