Teacher Builds Better Balance for Fun in Retirement

Many people think of retirement as a period in life full of baking cookies, swinging on the porch, and golfing. But for many retirees, that routine might sound like a nice vacation for a little while but becomes tedious on a daily basis.

Karen J. was one of those retirees. She didn't want to settle quietly into her hobbies after she retired from teaching. The desire to fill up some of her time and satisfy her quest for continual learning took her back to the classroom part-time.

However, it didn't take long for her to realize a traditional teaching role in a classroom was no longer an ideal fit for her retirement years. "Being inside the school working with a very limited and tight schedule, I decided I wanted more flexibility," Karen says.

Seeking a Better Work-Life Balance in Retirement

Karen also needed a job that provided more consistent income to add to her savings and boost her hobby fund. "Not getting a salary when schools are closed, on holidays, during vacation weeks, or over the entire summer was a bit stressful!"

But Karen found that it was challenging to find a part-time job that matched her professional skills and experience on her own, which led her to FlexJobs.

Discovering New Options

Through FlexJobs, Karen was able to land not one but two part-time, flexible positions with TutorMe and Littera Education. And together, they fit her needs perfectly. Now, Karen is busy "enjoying more of life by having time for other pursuits, piano, crafts, church activities, or simply being with friends."

"I enjoy being at home because it is quiet. I can take breaks when needed, schedule work, and not feel rushed to get from one place to another by a certain time. Now, I can leave for appointments or just have additional time for my hobbies."

Beyond balancing her time, Karen enjoys staying relevant and learning new skills that align with her lifelong career. "These roles give me additional training since I am a lifelong learner and still would like to help students achieve success."

Advice to Anyone Considering a FlexJobs Membership

Like many retirees, Karen noted that it's a balancing act to fight against age bias and other stereotypes about retirees. She suggests that other retirees update their resumes strategically with a focus on communicating both their experience and desire to keep working.

And even though budgets can be tight in retirement, Karen thinks the paid membership is well worth it. She says, "Try it for three months and keep looking! FlexJobs has a LOT of jobs."

Create Your Own Retirement Rules

There is no standard blueprint for retirement anymore. As Karen discovered, you can create your work-life balance rules.

If you're ready to explore your flexible work options, FlexJobs can help. We post jobs daily in over 50 career categories, and we have an entire team of real people dedicated to verifying those jobs to ensure that our members only see legitimate opportunities. Take the tour and discover all of the ways FlexJobs can support you!

Balance and a Rewarding Career Using FlexJobs

For many, the United States Census Bureau study about commuting comes as no surprise. The Bureau's report shares that the average time spent commuting back and forth to work has grown to almost 30 minutes each way. And for most professionals who work in an office setting, giving up five hours of life each week for a commute is pretty standard.

But Sara S. struggled with a lengthy commute combined with long, draining hours. She realized that something had to change. Her work life was taking a toll on her family and personal commitments and pushing her to professional burnout. It was time to take back control of her life.

Committing to Pursuing Balance

Recognizing that she needed a change, Sara looked for remote roles independently. It was only a short time before she realized she was spending more time sourcing legitimate positions than she was applying for and following up on them.

"I had been looking for a remote position for a few months and wasted so much time and energy on fake job leads." Even with the many awareness campaigns, job seekers like Sara are often overwhelmed with the number of scams targeting job seekers. Fortunately, she found FlexJobs, and her job search became streamlined and productive.

Building a Rewarding Career

Sara knew that her next role needed to do more than create balance. She was also determined that it would be a quality position aligned with her career goals. "I didn't want to step backward in my career or be stuck in a position with no growth opportunities."

Fortunately, Sara remained focused on her goals and found a perfect fit in a fully remote role with UnitedHealth Group. Now, Sara can be more present for her family without having to put her career to the side. "I found an organization I can grow with, professionally and personally."

Thriving Throughout All Areas

If you ask Sara how working remotely has affected her life, she'll tell you she's enjoying building better balance in the larger, more apparent areas of her life. "I have more time for the things that are important to me—my kids, my education goals, and my health," she says.

But like most professionals new to remote work, Sara discovered that work flexibility has also enhanced her life in other areas. "I am saving on gas and auto expenses, eating healthier, and I can wear activewear to work, so I go for a jog or do Pilates on my breaks!"

Advocating for Work Flexibility

Now that Sara is thriving in a meaningful role supporting her work-life balance, she has become an advocate for others to make effective changes in their lives. "I have recommended FlexJobs to so many people. It was well worth purchasing the membership."

Her guidance to others looking for more work freedom? Your job search is much more than tailoring a resume and hitting "submit." Sara says, "Don't forget about the value of networking," also stating that, "A flawless resume is useless if no one ever reads it."

Create Your Own Success Story

We hear from job seekers like Sara every day, sharing the enormous impact that flexible work has made on their lives.

If you're ready to build a better work-life balance, take the tour and discover all of the resources that FlexJobs offers to support you in your job search.

Our take on the og:image:alt tag

 There’s some good intent in providing the og:image:alt tag, but it all depends on the image usage and context. Based on our testing, it appears the og:image:alt can be easily misused and lead to non-ideal results. We do believe it’s not something that users or an SEO plugin should attempt to manage. Instead, we do believe that not setting the og:image:alt tag is the best option. With Yoast SEO, we do provide the image, the post and metadata, and it’s up to social media platforms to present those in an accessible manner.

Andrea Fercia

At Yoast, I help improving Yoast's technology accessibility, spreading accessibility culture and blogging about it. I try to do my best to do the same for WordPress, where I'm contributing as a permanent core committer.

Facebook

 Based on our testing, when sharing a post on Facebook, the alternative text of the linked image within the post preview is set to the og:title value. That’s the linked post title and it’s perfectly appropriate because it describes the link destination.

Let’s see an example (please consider that Facebook’s implementation may vary over time). This post on Facebook links to a BBC News page that does use an og:image:alt tag.

By inspecting the page source, we can see the tag content value:

<meta property="og:image:alt" content="People walk on hot coals in Lithuania">

However, the text People walk on hot coals in Lithuania isn’t used anywhere on the Facebook share. Instead, the linked image alternative text is set to the value of the og:title tag:

Hot coal walk leaves 25 injured in Switzerland

Thankfully, I’d say, because the og:image:alt refers to Lithuania while the news is about people injured in Switzerland!

Providing the og:image:alt tag for Facebook seems a bit pointless, as it’s not used.

Twitter

The Twitter implementation is a bit more complicated from a technical perspective. It seems that it does use the og:image:alt tag and adds its content to the link labeling mechanism, which is incorrect.

A Twitter card is made of two main sections. The first one contains the linked image. The second one is the card footer, which is a link that contains the post title and the post description:

Technically, the linked image is not exposed to assistive technologies such as screen readers, because:

• The linked image is placed within a container element with an aria-hidden="true" attribute, which hides it from assistive technology.
• The link itself is moved out from the keyboard Tab order by the means of a tabindex="-1" attribute.

The whole ‘card’ container element is clickable via JavaScript. The container element is then labeled by the means of an aria-labelled attribute that references both the first section of the card (the image container) and the second section (the footer).

The important thing to understand is that assistive technology will announce the card container using the content of the elements referenced by the aria-labelledby attribute. Specifically, they will announce, in the following order:

• The alternative text of the linked image in the first section, as provided by the og:image:alt tag.
• The entire textual content of the card footer.

When sharing on Twitter our BBC News post example, the actual text that labels the Twitter card would be:

People walk on hot coals in Lithuania bbc.com Hot coal walk leaves 25 injured in Switzerland The group suffered burns after walking over a bed of coals as part of a team building exercise.

That’s incorrect because it adds the image content description to the link destination description. Also, this specific example would definitely be confusing. Again, is it about Lithuania or Switzerland?

Informative purpose

 This time we’re going to use our image in a post about how to make Pizza with pepperoni. A pizza recipe! At some point in our post, we describe in detail how to distribute the red, yellow, and green pieces of pepperoni on top of our pizza. We add our image to illustrate this step of the recipe. Would the default alternative text ‘Pizza with pepperoni‘ be meaningful in this context? No, it wouldn’t. Luckily, we can change the alt attribute in the post content and make it more helpful based on the context:

<img src="image.png" alt="The thin slices of pepperoni evenly distributed on top of your pizza">

Functional purpose

For our last example. we’re going to use our image in a blog post about our favorite Pizza place. At some point, we use our image as the only content for a link to our favorite pizza place website. Thus, the default alternative text ‘Pizza with pepperoni’ would actually be the link text. That would be wrong for both accessibility and SEO. Instead, the alternative text should describe the functionality of the link. It should describe the link destination. Luckily, we can change it in the post content:

<a href="https://myfavoritepizzaplace.com">
    <img src="image.png" alt="Go to my favorite pizza place website">
</a>

How does the og:image:alt tag work?

The og:image:alt is an Open Graph tag meant to accompany the og:image tag. According to the specification, it should provide ‘A description of what is in the image‘. However, the principles illustrated above should apply to the og:image:alt as well.

For example, in the context of a linked image in a social share, describing what is in the image is incorrect. A linked image alternative text should describe the link destination, not the visual content of the image.

Why we removed the og:image:alt tag in Yoast SEO

When an image is actually used by Facebook (or other platforms), we know that it’ll usually be used as a linked image in a social share. Therefore, the image alternative text should describe the link destination. It should use the linked post title. Setting the alternative text to the value of an og:image:alt tag that describes the image content wouldn’t be appropriate in this case and might confuse users relying on assistive devices. Should the og:image:alt tag value be set to the post title then? That doesn’t seem correct. At this point, the actual purpose of the og:image:alt seems a bit questionable, at least in the context of a linked image in a social share.

That’s the reason why in Yoast SEO 10.1 (released in April 2019) we decided to remove the ability to set the og:image:alt tag. It fails to address a problem that should be solved upstream. At Yoast, we do think that managing the og:image:alt tag is more of a job for Facebook (and other platforms that uses it). They’re the only ones who can provide meaningful alternative text for their content:

• They know how the og:image will be used.
• They know in which context the og:image will be used.
• They know the title of the original post the og:image belongs to.
• They can provide a meaningful alternative text when the og:image has a functional purpose, for example when it’s a linked image.
• They can auto-generate alternative text to describe the og:image content, when the image has an informative purpose.

Does it really matter?

Our decision to remove the ability to set the og:image:alt tag is based on exploring the actual usage the main social platforms make of it. At the time of writing this post (June 2022), it appears the og:image:alt is either not used or it is used in a way that’s potentially problematic for accessibility and SEO.