Twitter Becomes Easier for Visually Impaired Users

Twitter is one of the most widely used social networking websites in the world. In order to remain competitive in the highly contested arena of social networking companies has to be find new ways to keep their portal above the rest. On the same thought Twitter has rolled up some new exciting features which are aimed at providing more functionality along with helping the visually impaired audience. Twitter has released the feature to add descriptions to the images in the Tweets. Adding descriptions which is also known as alternative text will help specifically the visually impaired users in understanding the image in a better way.
Twitter new service now widely available

Twitter has promptly made this new available on both Android and iOS platform. Now user from any kind of mobile device will be able to add more information to their pictures within an instant. In order to use this feature users will have to go the app’s accessibility setting and look out for the option called ‘compose image descriptions’. Once this feature is enabled users will be able to see an option to add description for every image they will upload.

It is interesting to note that tweet character limit is still set at 140 characters while Twitter offers 420 characters for writing the picture descriptions. Some experts believe that this is Twitter way of saying you can speak more with an image rather in your tweet. Another feature of this service is that description will have the potential read by the assistive technology such as Braille displays and screen readers.

Tech giants are looking out for the visually impaired in a great manner

Over the years technology advancement has gone through such a rapid phase that we had missed on a number of technology evolutions. Twitter introduction of description for images not just shows how much tech companies cares for the visually impaired population but it also bring focus on the technology which has made it happen. Nowadays smartphones have certain great accessibility features like VoiceOver in the iPhone which offers text readout aloud through gesture support. Google has its own TalkBack which helps visually impaired users in accessing anything on their devices in a simple and smart move.

Twitter’s intention behind bring this new feature

Twitter doesn’t bring new features quite and when it does it serves more than one purpose. Twitter has asserted that they had brought this feature to empower its users and help the visually impaired users in a better fashion. Twitter maintains that photos had been center of some of the greatest moments of the Twitter and new features will help in improving the user’s experience. But a report by Venturebeat suggests that having the accessibility addition on the twitter will help Twitter in identifying the specific tweets much easier than before. This feature will help in improving the Twitter’s search feature which is quite lackluster doesn’t help much. Apart from these Twitter’s new feature will also be available for the third party users and API partners because it will be made available via the Twitter cards and REST API.