Timeline for Stack Exchange policy on images and the visually impaired
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
16 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 1, 2019 at 16:04 | comment | added | terdon | @David oh, sure. Sorry, I didn't mean to imply you did anything wrong. I just happen to have been in your shoes and can report that a regular user posting on a local meta and getting support is enough to make it into a policy. | |
| Nov 1, 2019 at 15:32 | comment | added | David | @BryanKrause — Thanks. I agree it would be more difficult to implement my second proposal and do not know whether it would be possible for an individual SE such as Biology to request a new technical feature. Perhaps I should check out the W3C advice on this topic so I can suggest a specific outcome one would want to achieve. | |
| Nov 1, 2019 at 15:22 | comment | added | David | @terdon — Well posting here was the first step of trying to get things done. However it appears that there are enough posts about text as images that I was unaware of (I did a search, but obviously used the wrong terms). The second point, which I should separate, is actually a feature request — a change in what happens when you start uploading an image. I'm not sure how best to bring that to the attention of the SE owners who would be legally responsible if anyone sues them under accessibility legislation (not necessaryily in the US — think EU). | |
| Oct 30, 2019 at 18:16 | history | edited | gnat | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
deleted 9 characters in body
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| Oct 30, 2019 at 17:58 | comment | added | terdon | @David the way to make it policy is to post a question on meta, detailing your views on why text as image is a bad thing and then wait for enough upvotes to call a consensus. Then, you can simply point users to that meta. I have done this on both Unix & Linux (posted when I was a mod) and Ask Ubuntu (posted before I became a mod). | |
| Oct 30, 2019 at 17:39 | answer | added | Makoto | timeline score: 12 | |
| Oct 30, 2019 at 16:54 | comment | added | Bryan Krause | As to (1), my view is that it is already the policy at Biology.SE to not allow text in images (and this is one of the suggested useful comments in Bio.SE meta and references the SO meta). It can be more difficult to adapt more complex diagrams and such, unfortunately, and so far we have not done anything to address that. | |
| Oct 30, 2019 at 16:49 | answer | added | anonymous | timeline score: 10 | |
| Oct 30, 2019 at 16:48 | comment | added | David | Thanks to those who mentioned previous posts on this topic. They appear to bear out @DKBose as nothing has been done. But I would say that it is time SE was made to address this real issue of accessibility. Perhaps the threat of legal action might concentrate the mind. | |
| Oct 30, 2019 at 16:46 | comment | added | nvoigt | This should already be policy for every SE site and for purely practical reasons: we want to be an archive where you find answers and a picture of text cannot be indexed by a search engine, so a picture of text falls short of the basic mission statement already, even for people with perfect eyesight. | |
| Oct 30, 2019 at 16:43 | comment | added | m69 ''snarky and unwelcoming'' | There are several posts on MSO about this: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/285551 I often post the comment "please do not post text or code as images; they can't be searched, copy/pasted into answers, or read by screen-readers for the visually impaired" and add a link to one of the MSO posts on the subject. | |
| Oct 30, 2019 at 16:42 | comment | added | ColleenV | It would be helpful for ELL to have official guidance we can easily point people to when they post images of text | |
| S Oct 30, 2019 at 16:39 | history | suggested | divibisan | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
If this is a legitimate feature-request, there's no need to get it mixed up in the CoC issue
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| Oct 30, 2019 at 16:37 | comment | added | Isaac Moses | Related to (2): meta.stackexchange.com/questions/231949/… | |
| Oct 30, 2019 at 16:35 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Oct 30, 2019 at 16:39 | |||||
| Oct 30, 2019 at 16:34 | history | asked | David | CC BY-SA 4.0 |