Twitter rolls out its ALT badge and improved image descriptions

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The accessibility features that will make alt text descriptions more prominent for all users were announced Thursday. Images with text descriptions will get a Badge that reads "alt" and will bring up a description if you click on it. Changes were announced last month.

As promised, the exposed image descriptions and the ALT Badge go global today. We are ready. You're ready. Let us describe our images.

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/bkJmhRpZPg https://t.co/ep1ireBJGt

— Twitter Accessibility (@TwitterA11y) April 7, 2022

The instructions for how to add the image descriptions were provided by the social network.

• After uploading an image to a tweet, select Add description underneath the image
• Enter a description of the image in the text box. The character count is in the corner of the box; you have 1,000 characters available
• Click Save, and an ALT badge will appear in the corner of the image
• Tweet. If someone clicks on the ALT badge, the description should appear on-screen

Most users didn't necessarily have access to alt text descriptions unless they used screen readers. It could be hard to find where and how to add an image description. The company didn't have a dedicated accessibility team until late 2020, with workers who wanted to work on accessibility issues volunteering their time.