A LITTLE KNOWN FEATURE ON TWITTER AND FACEBOOK by Victoria Cornwall

When I was a teenager I became temporarily blind. It lasted for several minutes and was caused by a head injury to the back of my head. I had slipped on some ice at school, fell backwards and hit the occipital lobe of my brain. This area of the brain is responsible for vision and the trauma caused me to suffer from cortical blindness.

I still have a vivid memory of having my eyes wide open but not being able to see. It was terrifying. I was fortunate, my eyesight returned completely, but many who suffer from impaired vision, either as a result of disease, injury or degeneration, are not so lucky.

What has my experience got to do with writing, books and the little known feature on Twitter and Facebook? I guess I just wanted to convey how suddenly we can find ourselves in the position of losing our sight.

On the 1st April, my debut novel, The Thief’s Daughter, was released by Soundings as an audiobook. It is narrated by the very talented and experienced voice-over artist, Emma Powell, and I believe her soft, husky and expressive voice adds to the experience of being whisked back in time to the 18th century. See if you agree by clicking HERE to listen to the preview.

I understand that those who enjoy listening to audiobooks do not have to be visually impaired as they make great companions whilst driving, working, enjoying a hobby or doing the housework. However, they do open up another world to those who do suffer with some degree of visual impairment and their importance cannot be over-emphasised.

I spend a lot of time on social media as part of promoting my writing. How was I going to promote the audio version of my novel to visually impaired fans of fiction? Screen reading software is great for the written word, but I wanted the cover of the audiobook to be accessible to them too. It turns out that Twitter and Facebook were already one step ahead of me.

In 2016, Twitter added a feature to help visually impaired twitter users “see” the images attached to tweets by allowing the tweeter to add a description to the image which could be read by screen reading software.

This is how you enable the feature:-
Click on your Twitter Profile drop down box and click on Settings and Privacy

Click on Accessibility

 Next to the Image Description tick Compose Image Descriptions.

The next time you tweet with an image, a box will appear for you to add a description. It does not work on schedule tweets and don't forget to use an appropriate hashtag such as #visuallyimpaired

Facebook has an alternate text feature for images too. To learn how to do it click on this LINK or follow the steps below:-
Upload a photo to your Facebook page and click on the edit icon.

Click on the Alt Text icon and fill in the box with the description of the image/photo you are posting.

Then click save in the bottom right corner.

So next time you post an image on Twitter or Facebook, consider making the image accessible to users who are visually impaired by using the features described above.

Do you know of any features that can be used to help increase the access to social media by the visually impaired? I would love to hear about them.

Victoria Cornwall

To Buy Links:-

The Thief's Daughter

The Captain's Daughter