Hypolite Petovan

I believe people on the #Fediverse are more likely to add alternative text to the images they post than on any other popular social media platform, that's great for #Accessibility. But it isn't the end-all-be-all of it. For example, when one of my contacts posts in German or Finnish or Farsi, I can copy the text and plug it in a translator to figure out what they meant.

However, when they share a picture including text in the same language, even if they transcribed the text in the picture in the alternative text attribute, I can't access it on mobile at all, and even on desktop I can't copy it from the default popup on mouse hover.

I tried to dabble with #CSS to reveal the alt-text attribute value using pseudo-content, but it doesn't work since we're dealing with an #HTML <img> which is an empty element by definition. Is there any other way to expose this attribute value other than just parse the text in the post body directly?

#WebDevelopment

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VegOS

1 year ago from Friendica via desktop browser •

@Hypolite Petovan Does this help on desktop? https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/copy-alt-text/

@Hypolite Petovan

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Hypolite Petovan

1 year ago •

@VegOS Yes, it would help, although not on mobile and not on non-Firefox browsers. I'm pretty sure there's an equivalent for Chrome and Safari but I'd rather not need an extension for this.

@VegOS

utzer [Friendica]

1 year ago from Fediverse •

@Hypolite Petovan @VegOS here is my opinion, well it reflects pretty much what I think about that topic.

https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/19a0555b-01f6-442b-bfc3-a060f7b574bb

Jupiter Rowland

2023-08-28 14:12:49

W3C: Detailed image descriptions don't belong in alt-text

A detailed #ImageDescription of a complex image does not go into the #AltText. The #W3C says so:
https://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/images/complex/
If it can be useful for sighted people, or if everyone, sighted people included, needs it to understand the picture, the image description goes elsewhere. That way, everyone can access it, so it's a matter of #accessibility.
The W3C recommends to put it on a separate page. But the W3C implies that everything on the Web is static webpages accessed via standard desktop Web browsers. That's what the W3C is all about.
Obviously, this doesn't work in the #Fediverse. Unless you're on #Hubzilla, you can't put #ImageDescriptions on separate pages because you can't make such pages in the first place. So the image description has to go into the post.
Again, no problem on Hubzilla which has virtually no post length limit. Same for #Friendica and #Streams. Depending on how long your description is, most other projects may not be problematic either.
But then there's #Mastodon. Only one project, but it's 80% of the Fediverse, and many Mastodon users think it is the Fediverse, full stop.
Mastodon limits posts to only 500 characters. If you came over from #𝕏 where you only had 280 characters, that sounds like a whole lot. But in practice, it's way too little, especially for image descriptions. This, by the way, is why "image description" and "alt-text" are synonymous and mutually exchangeable on Mastodon: Everyone puts their image descriptions into the alt-text which offers 1,500 characters. People can't even imagine that it could be any other way.
But it has to, also because any information available only in the alt-text is lost to those who can't access alt-text, for example due to a physical disability.
So on Mastodon with its 500-character limit, detailed image descriptions should go into a thread that follows the post with the image.
In either case, there should still be an alt-text that says that the image is described in follow-up posts (Mastodon) or the post itself (everywhere else).

Complex Images
Accessibility resources free online from the international standards organization: W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).
^{W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) (Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI))}

@Hypolite Petovan @VegOS

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Hypolite Petovan

1 year ago •

@utzer [Friendica] Thanks, this post is part of the reason I posted again about this topic that I explored before.

utzer [Friendica]

1 year ago from Fediverse •

@Hypolite Petovan I am already annoyed by the alt text for some time, there is info hidden in it and it is not shown. This text should be part of the post and I will write the image description in the post now, that is more accessible anyway. But I already was shamed for not including an alt text in such a case.

@Hypolite Petovan

Hypolite Petovan

1 year ago •

@utzer [Friendica] It sounds like a classic case of following the letter but not the spirit of a rule.

like this

VegOS

1 year ago from Friendica via desktop browser •

@Hypolite Petovan For me Mastodon is like Orwell's Animal Farm: "Two legs bad, four legs good!" Over and over again.

@Hypolite Petovan

VegOS

1 year ago from Friendica via desktop browser •

@utzer [Friendica] @Hypolite Petovan I'm not sure, but I think screen readers do read the alt text. Of course it was much much easier to include a description into the post.

@Hypolite Petovan

Hypolite Petovan

1 year ago •

@VegOS Yes, screen readers read the alt-text. Aside from showing when the image doesn't load, it's almost the only system that actually reads it. The pop-up on mouse hover on desktop browser is triggered with the title attribute. It can show on mobile browser when an image is dragged from a page, but on iOS it only works in the standalone Safari app, not in any other web view that I know of.

@VegOS

VegOS

1 year ago from Friendica via desktop browser •

@Hypolite Petovan The old IE needed the alt attribute for the popup/tooltip, but that's history.

@Hypolite Petovan

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