The Alt Text Meme: why “brandter” should never come at the expense of accessibility
Written by Helen Gradwell, Creative Lead
Image source: Midjourney
The recent “Alt Text meme” on Twitter has opened up a much-needed conversation about accessibility in reactive social media comms.
If you haven’t encountered this in the wild, the premise is to upload a graphic saying “Click here” with an arrow pointing to the Alt Text tag. When the user clicks on it, there’s a little joke.
On the face of it, it’s innocent enough; a fun little Easter Egg.
When any meme starts circulating on Twitter, you can be sure that marketing departments throughout the land will be asking “Should we jump on this?” and “How can we relate this to [our product or service].” And as a result, some big names (we won’t say which) joined in.
As the social media agency for Specsavers, naturally this meme came onto our reactive radar too. And on the face of it, it fit our MINT Creative Reactive strategy – staying agile to put a brand spin on trending goings-on.
However, once you scratched the surface, there were some pretty significant problems with the concept – especially from an accessibility point of view.
AGILITY ISN’T THE ONLY PART OF REACTIVE COMMS
Being fast is one thing. But when you jump on a trend quickly, with no consideration of the context, mistakes can be made.
That’s why another key aspect of our MINT approach is intelligence. Just because we can, doesn’t necessarily mean we should.
As a brand that champions accessibility to eyecare for all, abusing the Alt Text function was obviously a no-go for us. Unless… We could make a point by doing so.
— Specsavers (@Specsavers) May 2, 2023
ADDING THE MAGIC
And that’s where magic – the final tenet of MINT – came in. We combined the trending topic (Alt Text meme) with a potent message about accessibility on social media. Accessibility is a huge focus for Specsavers, and when you work with a brand so passionate about a specific subject, that subject is always front of mind when producing reactive content at speed. It certainly helps when your client is a force for good, that’s for sure.
We uploaded the meme, but instead of a joke, we wrote a message to educate the masses:
The image says "click here" with an arrow pointing to the ALT description tag in the bottom left corner.
Side note for everybody:
Many Twitter users, including brands, have been using this to prompt people to open the ALT text, where they have left a joke.
ALT text is a hugely important accessibility tool designed to help people navigate the internet more easily, so it shouldn't be used as a punchline. This is especially true if the ALT text doesn't describe the image, leaving blind and visually impaired people out of the joke
The tweet has now been seen millions of times and gained coverage in titles from BBC News to The Independent, celebrating how we “turned the trend on its head.”
ACCESSIBILITY IS A HYGIENE FACTOR
It’s not just brands with skin in the game in terms of accessibility (like Specsavers) that should be spreading awareness.
The internet is our home, and that home is used by a huge variety of people, who all have different needs and experiences to consider. Accessibility should be baked into everything we do, and anti-accessibility memes like the ALT Text one, are a step in the wrong direction.
For more accessible work from Tangerine, why not have a look at our 36 Days of Type over on our Instagram – educating the masses about BSL, one gorgeous post at a time.
To read more about our Mint service, click here.
