Making GIFs Accessible

Social media platforms feature short animations known as GIFs, but they are inaccessible to people with vision impairments. Unlike static images, GIFs contain action and visual indications of sound, which can be challenging to describe in alternative text descriptions. We examine a large sample of inaccessible GIFs on Twitter to document how they are used and what visual elements they contain. In interviews with 10 blind Twitter users, we discuss what elements of GIF content should be described and their experiences with GIFs online. The participants compared alternative text descriptions with two other alternative audio formats: (i) the original audio from the GIF source video and (ii) a spoken audio description. We recommend that social media platforms automatically include alt text descriptions for popular GIFs (as Twitter has begun to do), and content producers create audio descriptions to ensure everyone has a rich and emotive experience with GIFs online.