The following #pandemic postcards relate in some way or another to the intersection of the Planet RantWoman visual experience and various technologies.
RantWoman, the world is on the cusp of multiple local civic and global crises and you are writing about emojis and alt text?
Yep. And PLEASE don't argue!
Little Sister's emergency tooth extraction.
Apparently if one needs an emergency tooth extraction and has not had a COVID test recently, Little Sister's dentist will not use power tools. Plus the top of Little Sister's tooth apparently broke off and there was a lot of effort to extract by hand. All of this left Little Sister with a sore jaw, sore throat, headache and a giant bruise along her jaw and neck that looked like a vampire had been chomping on her neck. Looked like as in even RantWoman could tell something was weird. RantWoman had to peer closely to realize the image in the picture was little sister and once RantWoman figured out, the next exclamation was Owwww!
On top of the pain and maimed look, the dentist got paid to do that to her.
RantWoman finds herself wondering whether it would have made sense to send Little Sister home with antibiotic and painkiller and tell her to come back after she had a COVID test. But RantWoman is not licensed to practice dentistry so...
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| New Bus Shelter EB on 23rd at Jackson |
Sighted people and Alt text.
Tweeting excitement about a reopened bus stop but RantWoman was an evil... and put the location in the alt text with the picture of the new shelter design. RantWoman thinks the shelter design is elegant--except for the part about nowhere to sit. It is fashionable to deploy bus shelters without benches because benchless bus shelters tend to have less "persistent non-transit related activity. RantWoman considers this benchless design unfortunate and a barrier for some system users. RantWoman did not really take into account that sighted people might not interact with the alt text and what if they have no screen reader using colleague?
ORrrr, what if Smart phones were smart enough to detect that there is something in the alt text and read it to users even if the users do not usually have screen reading turned on. Or give non-screen users some cue and way to access alt text?
Stickers with or without alt text.
Next we come to the RantWomen's more or less daily routine of morning text messages. These are usually cheerful but not necessarily great literature. In fact they run heavily to emojis and stickers. What is the difference between emojis and stickers? The difference is mostly as far as RantWoman can tell, where one goes on the screen to find each. Also whether or not Talkback tells RantWoman what the emojis from RantMom are seems to vary with update increments. Presently after the latest update, RantWoman gets to decipher blobs without audio cues. Luckily RantMom's emoji selection does not vary too much and TalkBack is reading the text.
RantWoman for her part has found a library with several sets of stickers that all come with descriptive enough alt text. RantWoman can tell she does not care about most of the sets of stickers but really likes a few of them.
Here again though a girl can dream: RantWoman wishes that if RantMom's phone is receiving stickers with good alt text, maybe RantMom's phone could help direct RantMom to stickers with good alt text too. That way, RantWoman would be more likely to appreciate some of the things RantMom sends without even having to think about trying to talk RantMom through to find the stickers with alt text
Alvaro and flan
One of RantWoman's favorite sticker sets is a red axolotl named Alvaro. Stickers include Alvaro looking bleary-eyed over a cup of coffee, Alvaro cheerily emerging from a swimming pool, Alvaro lounging in bowl of guacamole, Alvaro bursting out of a flan, and some others RantWoman rarely uses. Alvaro and flan have become quite the RantSister in-joke and RantWoman definitely sent Little Sister some electronic flan after the latest dental drama.
And how is your pandemic going?
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