GIPHY And Scrible Add Alternative Text For GIFs More Easily Accessed

GIPHY will add alternative text for people with vision problems (photo: Dinda Buana/VOI)

JAKARTA - GIPHY, a service that allows users to search for and share short or gif loop videos, announced its partnership with Scribley, a content accessibility solution provider.

The partnership allows Scribley to fill in or add descriptive text to platform content for users to experience visual impairments.

"1 in 5 people currently identify as persons with disabilities. Whether it's visual, cognitive, or cellular, there's a significant population that needs supporting technology to explore the web," wrote GIPHY on its website.

Do you know 1 in 5 people identify as disabled?GIPHY and content accessibility solutions provider, @scribelytribe, just announced a partnership that helps fill in the missing content that makes the web inaccessible to those who are visually impaired. ➡️https://t.co/NgXQno6654 pic.twitter.com/cDVI6dMqjz

— GIPHY (@GIPHY) December 6, 2022

By partnering with Scribley, GIPHY will be the first GIF provider to have an alternative text description for the most popular content available via API GIPHY.

This means that screen readers will read alternative text for this content out loud, allowing users to experience GIFs when they browse and share GIPHY content to express themselves.

GIF is an important part of our daily lives, thanks to its unique ability to convey ideas, emotions, and humor in a way that often cannot be done by static images. But without alternative text, that moment is lost and does not include millions," said▁kebutuhan Desrosiers, founder and CEO of Scribley.

Alternative text on GIPHY is now available for the most popular content under top search terms. GPIHY also plans to gradually roll out alternative text to more of its libraries.

This means that on GIPHY's web and mobile applications, alternative text will be automatically read through the screen reader's device for the content.

Scrible's knowledge and expertise with an alternative text description makes them ideal partners to improve GIPHY's accessibility for the visually impaired and users of our screen readers, said Amanda Kaufmann, VP of Product, GIPHY.

Kaufmann said this partnership was only the beginning of what GIPHY hoped would be a long-term partnership with Scribley in making GIPHY a fairer and more accessible platform.