Do Pictures Really Painte A Thousand Words

byKerryF1912

222 followers

5 years ago

This is just a quick post and something that is dear to my heart. I've come across blog posts on here that I like the look of the title and want to read more, only to discover, once I get there that I cannot.

"Why?" you might ask? Well, because I'm blind and while there have been great advancements in technology with the birth of the internet and screen reading technology which reads out any textual information on the computer screen so that a person who cannot see the screen can interact with it, as yet, these great pieces of software cannot translate pictures.

So, how would you feel if you went into a library and were immediately blindfolded? How would you feel if, after actually managing to locate the information you are looking for, the very page where that information lies has been torn out or indeed scribbled over. What would you do?

Welll, when you simply place a picture on your blog, this is what is effectively happening to a blind person. The information is there but not accessible to them. You might be under the impression that pictures mean nothing to blind people, And indeed my psychology thesis as an undergraduate backs up this theory. When I asked sighted subjects to describe every-day objects to a blind person, they really struggled. When asked to describe a post-box, they hesitated to say such things as its colour (red in the UK, Blue in the States I believe). When I asked my subjects why this was, they thought that we wouldn't know what red was or what colours meant and yes, they may have a point but the fact is, post boxes are red.

Although blind people can't see, they build up images in their minds about what things look like and are, in some cases, visual learners. A lot of my friends were shocked to find out that I myself am a visual learner. When trying to revise the reading process for my Psychology exam, I read and re-read the paragraphs of words but just couldn't get them to stick. When a friend of mine actually sat down and described the flow chart of the reading process to me, I had it in my head. I don't think I could tell you what it is now but I carried that image with me for a long time.

So, think about this when creating your blog posts. If your pictures are showing graphs etc, describe them. Yes, I know this takes extra work and pictures convey information so much quicker and easier than having to write out the description but think about the sector of market you are missing out on. There are a lot of blind people out there who cannot get a job and might consider doing something like WA to earn an income online as, in most areas, they would be able to do this easily, especially with good support and the step-by-step training available here.

Think about alt tags also. Label your pictures correctly and it will be immediagely obvious to a blind person what the picture is. Sometimes an image can be a really good memory aid and blind people more than most, use their memories all the time, for learning new routes, building up visual impressions of new ones etc.

Think, the next time you are writing a blog post. If you don't do this, you might be losing a big group of people. Trust me when I say, if you take the time to do this, it will stick with blind person and they will come back for more.