Alt Text Feature in Mastodon Connection

[ymhc]

Dear Make.com Team and Community,

I am reaching out on behalf of a non-profit organization. Our mission is deeply rooted in accessibility and inclusivity, ensuring that all individuals, regardless of their abilities, have equal access to information and resources.

We have been using the Mastodon connection on Make.com for our social media activities. However, we have encountered a significant limitation that affects our inclusivity efforts. Currently, the Mastodon connection on Make.com does not support the addition of alt text to media files, specifically images. This feature is vital for making content accessible to individuals with visual impairments, as it provides a text description of the image, enabling screen readers to convey the essence of the image to users who cannot see it.

It is worth noting that Mastodon’s API supports adding alt texts to images:

MediaAttachment - Mastodon documentation

The LinkedIn connection already includes an alt text feature:

The absence of this feature in the Mastodon connection has not only limited our ability to serve our audience inclusively but has also attracted criticism from multiple Mastodon users who expect and value accessibility features.

We rely significantly on automation for cross-posting our content on social media. This is crucial for us as a small non-profit with limited funding and resources. Our staff has spent hours figuring out how to implement alt text in the past months but we were unsuccessful.

Given the importance of this feature for accessibility and the precedent set by other connections within Make, we kindly request the development and integration of an alt text feature for the Mastodon connection.

We appreciate your attention to this matter and look forward to a positive response and the implementation of this crucial feature.

Thank you for your support and understanding.

[samliew]

That’s a great idea! I’m sure others would agree that this is a nice feature to have.

You can submit this suggestion to the Idea exchange, under App improvement ideas.

Don’t forget to search for it first, just in case someone already suggested it, so that you don’t end up creating a duplicate.

In the meantime,

If the external service has a Developer API Reference/Documentation then you should be able to integrate the endpoints in Make using the app’s universal module (Make an API call) or generic HTTP “Make a request” module.

If you need assistance in setting up the app’s universal module, or the generic HTTP module, please provide additional information about what you have tried with regards to the external service’s Developer API Reference – how you are setting the connection up, a link to the endpoint are you trying to connect to, and what errors you are encountering.

[Michaela]

Hello @ymhc welcome to the Make Community

What @samliew is suggesting is the right approach here.

However, I wanted to step in and mention that if you haven’t already, you can apply for Make’s NGO program using this form.