📢 Introducing the #UnseenImageChallenge! 📢
What if everyone experienced social media the way screen reader users do? Let's find out together!

Visit our challenge website for more information and examples: micr0.dev/unseenChallenge

What Is It?

Post a solid black square image with detailed alt text describing what would have been there. Everyone will "see" the same way screen reader users see the post! This powerful exercise demonstrates why accessible content matters.

How To Participate:

1. Choose a meaningful image based on the daily theme
2. Replace it with a plain black square in your post
3. Write a vivid, detailed description as the alt text
4. Use the hashtag #UnseenImageChallenge
5. Nominate 3 friends to join the challenge

Need Help With Alt Text?

Not sure how to write good descriptions? We've created a comprehensive alt text guide at micr0.dev/alttext with examples, tips, and even an interactive quality checker!

You can also DM me the original image, and I'll help generate alt text you can use! (Make sure you are following me first! Mastodon blocks 'unsolicited' DMs!)

Example: Instead of "My cat" try "My orange tabby cat Whiskers lounging in a sunbeam on the windowsill, looking sleepy with half-closed eyes"

Daily Themes:

• Monday: Nature & Outdoors
• Tuesday: Pets & Animal Friends
• Wednesday: Art & Creativity
• Thursday: Food & Cuisine
• Friday: Places & Spaces
• Saturday: People & Portraits
• Sunday: Wild Card (anything you choose!)

Duration

The challenge runs for one full week! Join in on any or all of the daily themes.

Community Showcase

I'll be boosting exceptional examples throughout the week and featuring creative descriptions. Your participation helps inspire others!

Supporting the Mission

If you find value in this challenge and want to support Altbot's continued development and accessibility work, you can contribute to the project at ko-fi.com/micr0byte. All funds go directly toward server costs, development, and expanding our accessibility initiatives. However, awareness and participation are the most important contributions!

Why This Matters

Every day, blind and low-vision people experience the Fediverse entirely through alt text. This challenge helps everyone understand why detailed image descriptions are so important first hand. Awareness is important!

Resources

• Challenge information and examples: micr0.dev/unseenChallenge
• The Art of Alt Text guide: micr0.dev/alttext

The challenge begins today! Who's ready to make the Fediverse more accessible while trying something new? Make sure to tag three friends who you think should join in!

#Accessibility #AltText #DigitalInclusion

A little venting over alt texts and boosting...

Sometimes... I see a lovely snap 📸 in a Toot and I want to boost it... And then... I see the OP hasn't added any alt text. 😔
I have to admit, I may be lazy when it comes to checking those. I just check the mark if it's available, I don't check the actual texts. I always hope that people are being decent and that they will have added a helpful text.
With the altbot available for everyone to use, it's become much easier to share accessible images in our toots.
Yeah, you need to follow the altbot account (@altbot) and give it permission (once). Then, it will reply with a Toot containing the suggested alt text.
Yeah, you should copy that text, maybe edit it if it's not all accurate, and then edit into your original Toot.
It takes a few minutes.
But... Your toots will be more accessible to everyone. And I, and others like me, will be more eager to boost those alt-texted toots to our Friendos 💜.

Thank you to @micr0 for creating altbot, its really helped me a lot with making my tooted images more accessible. 😊 And I'm learning from it as well, as I sometimes try to write my own texts as well these days.

#AltText #Accessibility

Edit: saw a silly typo

Anyone who is blind, or who has worked with the blind, knows how expensive our technology can be. This couldn't be more true with relation to braille displays. Even the cheapest costs at least $799, and it's already behind the newest in that line, at $899. This is the Orbit Reader 20 and 20+. Now, a student in India wants to change that by creating a display that is truly affordable (under $50)! Please pass this on, so that we can give him greater recognition within the blind community. Even if it costs a bit more than he initially suspected it would, there is no excuse for the $2,000 to $5,000 average price of such technology when cheaper alternatives can be designed! He is determined to bring this to market, so let's help him do it and show our appreciation for his hard work on this life-changing project!

forbes.com/sites/kevinanderton…

#access #ACB #accessibility #affordability #blind #braille #BrailleDisplays #children #education #employment #independence #India #learning #NFB #ocr #parent #reading #science #school #students #teachers #technology #work #writing

Altbot™ Roadmap: What's Coming in 2025

Hello Fediverse friends! I'm Micr0, the creator of Altbot™ - a Fediverse bot that helps make social media more accessible by automatically generating alt-text descriptions for images and videos for people with visual impairments.

I wanted to share my exciting development plans in the coming months. Your feedback and support have been incredible, and I'm working hard to make Altbot™ even more helpful for everyone.

Version 2.1.2 - Coming Soon!

• More Languages: Adding language support without message translations
• Better Reminders: Making the system more helpful and less intrusive
• Help Documentation: Creating a GitHub wiki with resources on using Altbot™ effectively

Version 2.2 - Audio Understanding

• Local Speech Recognition: Integrating a local model like Whisper to process speech in audio and videos
• Enhanced Media Understanding: Providing audio transcripts to the Ovis model alongside video frames for more comprehensive alt-text

Version 2.3 - Fediverse Integration

I'm thrilled to announce my first official partnerships with Fediverse instances! I'll be developing an API with direct integrations into Fediverse software, starting with:

• Chuckya (mastodon) integration for fuzzies.wtf and wetdry.world
• Sharkey (misskey) integration with plasmatrap.com

These integrations will make alt-text generation seamless for users on these instances, with more partnerships planned in the future. And anyone will be able to host their own Altbot™ for their instance as well of course 😀

The speed of these releases depends on several factors: my personal motivation, support from the community, and my workload. Your encouragement, feedback, and Ko-fi support all help keep this project moving forward!

What features are you most excited about? Let me know your thoughts and suggestions below!

#Accessibility #Altbot #Fediverse #Roadmap

Hey Fediverse!

I'm micr0, creator of @altbot, the open-source bot that helps generate alt-text for images on the Fediverse to make content more accessible.

What's New in 2.1?

After successfully moving image processing to local hardware with version 2.0, I've now brought video processing capability back - but with a major privacy upgrade! Altbot can now generate descriptions for videos completely locally and privately without sending content to Google or any other third-party services.

Important note: Currently, video processing is visual-only and doesn't include audio transcription. The audio processing Google was doing was some serious black magic fuckery that isn't possible to replicate locally with current technologies. But the visual descriptions are excellent and totally private!

With this update:

• All processing happens locally with zero data retention
• Complete privacy for all content
• No data used for training models
• Videos processed with the same privacy standards as images

I've also maintained Altbot's focus on energy efficiency - while video processing naturally requires more resources than images, I've implemented it to be as efficient as possible, keeping power consumption to a minimum while still delivering great results.

Thank You for Your Support!

I want to express my heartfelt thanks to everyone who helped me reach my donation goal on Ko-fi with the 2.0 launch! Your generosity made it possible to set up the local processing infrastructure that powers this privacy-focused service.

The response from the community has been incredible, and it means so much to know that privacy and accessibility are values we share.

What's Next for Altbot?

I'm already working on exciting future developments:

• An Altbot API that will allow developers to integrate alt-text generation into their applications
• Direct integration with Fediverse software platforms - I'm collaborating with instance developers to make accessibility a built-in feature!

Remember that Altbot has always been and remains fully open-source, with self-hosting being a core feature from day one for anyone who wants to run their own instance.

Supporting Ongoing Development & Infrastructure

Altbot currently runs on hardware in my home, which means I'm covering all the electricity costs for powering the GPU server that processes your media. While I've designed the system to be energy-efficient, running a dedicated AI server still impacts my monthly power bill.

Monthly donations would be especially helpful in sustainably supporting:

• Ongoing electricity costs
• Time spent on development and maintenance
• Future infrastructure improvements

Even small recurring contributions can make a huge difference in keeping this service running reliably and allowing me to dedicate more time to improvements!

Ways to Support:

• Ko-fi (one-time or monthly): ko-fi.com/micr0byte
• Ethereum: 0xC992E57236eb9F30E79d0469446a6CF08Be05939

I've added the ETH option for those who prefer crypto or don't want to use PayPal!

Version 2.1 also includes various internal improvements and bug fixes that make everything run more smoothly behind the scenes.

Thanks again for your support in making the web more accessible without compromising on privacy!

Feel free to boost or reach out with questions! For press inquiries: inquiries@micr0.dev

#Accessibility #Privacy #Fediverse #AltText #Altbot

📣 Announcing Altbot 2.0: The Privacy & Green Update 🔒💚

Exciting news! After months of development, Altbot 2.0 is officially launching with major improvements to privacy, efficiency, and description quality.

What's new in Altbot 2.0:

• 100% local AI processing for true privacy - unlike Google Gemini which saves data for training, Altbot 2.0 retains ZERO information about you or your images using the powerful Ovis2:8B model running on my custom AltTron server equipped with an A5500 GPU and expansion capacity for two additional GPUs
• Full GDPR compliance with clear informed consent - I've implemented comprehensive privacy measures including transparent data handling policies, user rights protection, and minimal data collection practices that exceed GDPR requirements
• Better quality descriptions across all 11 supported languages thanks to a newly developed translation layer specifically optimized for local LLM models
• Significantly more energy efficient with a new feature that shows you exactly how much energy was used for each request! This efficiency comes from using a server-grade GPU optimized for lower power consumption, and 36% of the energy consumed is from clean sources mainly nuclear power (thanks to being based in Georgia)

The only data Altbot 2.0 records:

• That a request happened
• How long it took to complete
• What type of media it was (image, video, or audio)
• What language was used

No images, no content, no personal data saved - ever.

For those who don't know, Altbot has been helping make the Fediverse more accessible by automatically generating alt-text descriptions for images. The project has grown beyond anything I imagined, now serving thousands of users across the network.

Support Altbot's Future 💝

To bring these privacy and efficiency improvements to life, I had to invest in a more powerful server than initially planned. The server costs exceeded my budget by around $900, which I've covered out of pocket. Who woulda thought that competing with a $1.98 trillion dystopian mega corporation would be expensive? Shocking, I know.

I've set up a Ko-fi fundraising goal to help recover these costs and support ongoing development: Ko-fi.com/micr0byte

Your contributions will help ensure Altbot remains:

• Free for everyone
• Continuously improved
• Sustainably maintained

Even small donations make a huge difference and motivate me to keep enhancing accessibility across the Fediverse!

This milestone represents a commitment to ensuring accessibility doesn't come at the cost of privacy or environmental impact. I'm incredibly proud of what we've built together.

As Altbot continues to grow, I'm open to sharing more about this journey with anyone interested in accessibility, ethical AI, or Fediverse projects.

For press inquiries: inquiries@micr0.dev

Feel free to boost or reach out!

#Accessibility #Fediverse #AltText #EthicalAI #OpenSource #Privacy #Altbot