The Importance of Adding Captions to Your Facebook Photos

Recently, a friend of mine told me that he was at this party and was talking to a group of people. They were talking about the pictures they uploaded in Facebook, and my friend asked if everyone has seen his profile picture.

Most of the group agreed and said nice things about the picture. But my friend suddenly realized that there was one person who couldn’t get what they were talking about. That person is blind so she couldn’t see the photo. After a short awkward pause, my friend started to explain what the photo was about. Although his blind friend appreciated his efforts, my friend admitted the situation made him feel quite ashamed.

What would you do if you were in this situation? You’d most probably feel awkward too. But with a bit more attention to your Facebook pictures, you can avoid these situations and ensure that everyone can enjoy your photos. This is done simply by adding captions to your Facebook pictures.

Why add captions to your Facebook Photos?

Captions may seem like a minor feature to sighted people, especially because they can already see the pictures. But to Facebook users who are blind, captions provide a convenient means to understand and appreciate content they can’t perceive on their own.

When a blind person using a screen reader accesses a photo which has no captions, all the screen reader would speak are numbers and letters. On the other hand, when you add captions to your picture, screen readers would speak the information you added. So although blind persons won’t see the picture, they’ll at least have an idea what is contained in it. To blind users, it’s like having a friend say the descriptions of pictures while accessing them one by one.

How to Add Captions to your Facebook Photos

You can add captions through a number of ways. The simplest one is by going to your photo album, going to the first photo, activating the “add captions” link, entering the descriptions, and saving it.

After you are done with the first photo, you can continue with the next pictures.

Things to Remember in Adding Captions

Be as concise as possible when describing your pictures. Give the most description to the main focus of the photo. Important details include colors, shapes, and designs. For pictures with many persons in them, you can just tag the people in the photo instead of including their names in the captions.

Conclusion

Facebook lets you upload pictures for you and your friends to enjoy. It also lets you describe your photos so that even blind Facebook users can appreciate what you are sharing. So the next time you upload a photo, be it a funny or a serious one, remember to spend a few seconds for adding captions to it.

Have you tried adding captions to your pictures? Do you have any other suggestions in making descriptive captions? Please do share with us your experiences with this useful feature.