important image description psa

phant0mwise:

hi! my name is cassie, i’m deaf, and my full-time job primarily involves working in disability access. i’m here with an important message about image and audio descriptions:

when you’re describing things for disabled people, you should not include your personal opinion on the thing you’re describing. even if it’s positive! you shouldn’t describe things as “a beautiful painting”, “a gorgeous photo”, “a wonderful song”, etc. i mean, if you’re sighted, think about how annoying it would be if every. single. picture you saw online was captioned with “this is beautiful and you like this” or “this is ugly and you hate it”, with the expectation that you have to agree with whatever the caption says and your own opinion doesn’t matter. it would be super annoying, right!

not to mention, i’ve seen people do this on pictures of real people, which can get weird—especially if they’re in a marginalized group you’re not in, in which case it can start to feel very fetishizing. 

so, to recap:

good descriptions: “a realistically-rendered oil painting of a tree”, “a selfie of a person with short blue hair”, “a pencil sketch of taako”

bad descriptions: “a gorgeously realistic oil painting of a tree”, “a selfie of an adorable person with short blue hair”, “a fantastic pencil sketch of taako”

(i encourage reblogs on this, because this is a huge issue that i’d love to see people gain awareness of)