Besides the character limit, there's an embarrassing number of reasons people might share screenshots of tweets:
- to "retweet" without notifying the person and being linked to as a "quote tweet" on the OP
- to share a post in a controversial context where many people are blocked by the tweeter in question (if you're blocked by someone, you can't read their tweets)
- to share a post you expect will be deleted shortly
- to screengrab a couple of posts that make up necessary context and wouldn't make sense if retweeted on their own
To your point about people using screenreaders etc, it seems to me that it would be fairly trivial (cputime aside) to OCR tweets and automatically apply alt-text, but instead they rely on the uploader to enter it manually.
Sure, but not everybody who is vision impaired is fully blind. in some situations they don’t use ocr or alt text, because sane websites can leverage zoom functions. Think: elderly people on iPhones, who may be able to pinch zoom if they’re technical understanding permits it.
- to "retweet" without notifying the person and being linked to as a "quote tweet" on the OP
- to share a post in a controversial context where many people are blocked by the tweeter in question (if you're blocked by someone, you can't read their tweets)
- to share a post you expect will be deleted shortly
- to screengrab a couple of posts that make up necessary context and wouldn't make sense if retweeted on their own
To your point about people using screenreaders etc, it seems to me that it would be fairly trivial (cputime aside) to OCR tweets and automatically apply alt-text, but instead they rely on the uploader to enter it manually.