Every morning, a quick-serve restaurant in my town sets out an A-frame chalkboard of their daily menu. It’s a small, unique menu, usually around six items. Interestingly, there is never a theme – it’s common to see a bowl of chili on the same day as an Asian wrap, or a burrito listed next to BBQ brisket. It’s a bold concept; you have to trust their curation. It surely goes against all common restaurateur wisdom, but I find it endearing.
Every morning, a photo of the A-frame chalkboard gets posted to their Facebook page. When you think about it, Facebook is the modern version of an A-frame chalkboard on a sidewalk. So, we have a meta situation (pun intended) – a chalkboard-within-a-chalkboard.
Today, I saw a comment on their daily Facebook post from an older customer who said it was difficult for them to read the chalkboard image:
As always, curiosity got the best of me. I checked to see what type of alternative text Facebook provided for the image:
May be an image of text that says ‘*FRUIT KABOB BOWL 2FRUIT,KABOBSM CREAMCHEESE FRUITDIP ASEORTED CRACKERS+ CHEESE CRACKE 米 SHAVED RIBEYE CHEESEQUESADILLA /CHIRS 12.5 *GRILLEDCHICKEN CHICKEN ASIAN WRAP- EHICKEN, SESAME DRESGING MAN DARIN ORANGE CRUNCHY STYLE NOODLES I2. ЖCHИu CORNBREAD- BOWL OFOUR HOMEMADE CHILI W/ A HOUSE BAKED SWEET CORNBREAD CORN BREAD MUFFIN W/ HONEY BUTTER'
For those not in the know:
The purpose of alternative text is to unambiguously describe an image. Think, “How would I describe this image to a blind person?” It also helps people with partial vision or people who are color blind.
While the alternative text is clearly gibberish and unhelpful, it’s really the “May be an image of…” part that is absurd. Clearly the work of a legal department. You can’t “sort of” describe an image. They’re hedging because they can’t trust their AI to accurately describe an image.
So who is responsible?
Is it the business for using a chalkboard menu?
Is it the business for not adding alternative text to their Facebook image?
Is it the business for not putting the menu in text within their post?
Or…
Is it Facebook, who doesn’t want to add friction to the posting process by forcing users to think about alternative text for images?
Is it Facebook, whose algorithm prefers images over text posts?
Is it Facebook, who is throwing AI at a problem and making things worse?
Or…
Is it simply a case of the chalkboard-within-a-chalkboard breaking the system and in most cases it’s fine.