BodhipaksaAug 26, 2023
Reposting this with alt text. In fact the entire description is in the alt text.
Show threadGreenSkyOverMe (Monika)Aug 27, 2023

@bodhipaksa As alt text is not always fully accessible to people who do not use screen readers please put descriptions for sighted users in the body of the message, not in the alt text. This applies to the artist, location and the commentary in the last sentence.

- Mobile web users often do not know how to display it. (Tap, then long-press.)
- For gifs/videos it’s not possible. (Not applicable here.)
- Long text is cut off. (N/a here.)
- Font size may be too small, cannot be enlarged.

Show threadBodhipaksaAug 27, 2023

@GreenSkyOverMe "Mobile web users often do not know how to display it."

I'm happy to accommodate people with disabilities, but ignorance does not qualify as a disability.

Show threadGreenSkyOverMe (Monika)

@bodhipaksa It is not intuitive that, in contrast to elsewhere, on Mastodon one has to tap to pop it out and then long-press.

Even that one can display it with long-press on other websites is not a well-known fact, and it doesn’t work for images that link somewhere, animated gifs and videos.

As alt text is not meant to convey additional information for sighted users there is no reason to expect users to have learned this.

So don’t mis-use alt text for this.

Aug 27, 2023 at 7:13amWeb
Show threadGreenSkyOverMe (Monika)Aug 27, 2023
@bodhipaksa Accommodating different levels of technical knowledge is also important and it’s rude to cast it away as "ignorance".
Show threadGreenSkyOverMe (Monika)Aug 27, 2023
@bodhipaksa There are also two groups of disabled people who are affected by this:
- Sighted computer users who navigate with the keyboard because their hands do not allow mouse usage (the keyboard may be triggered by a stick in the mouth, head or eye movements or the remaining hand use). As they cannot "hover" the mouse-over text is never shown to them.
- Partially sighted users may be able to see or easily enlarge the image, but not the font size of the alt text.