Adam ♿Browsers should save the alt text when you save an image. Operating systems should let you search your saved images via alt text.
Graham Sutherland / Polynomial@voltagex exif has the tag for it. just nothing actually uses it.
@gsuberland Seems like UserComment should be used instead as you can't use Unicode (?) in ImageDescription.
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/07/should-you-embed-alt-text-inside-image-metadata/
Now to petition browser makers...
Should you embed alt text inside image metadata?
Not everyone can see the images you post online. They may have vision problems, they may have a slow connection, or they might be using a text-only browser. How can we let them know what the image shows? The answer is alt text. In HTML we can add a snippet of text to aid accessibility. For example <img src="monalisa.jpg" alt="A painting of the Mona Lisa."> Most social networks will let users…
jntesteves@voltagex @gsuberland There seems to be a standard for alt text: https://iptc.org/news/iptc-announces-new-properties-in-photo-metadata-to-make-images-more-accessible/
I opened their reference image on GIMP and the specific tag seems to be `Xmp.iptc.AltTextAccessibility`.
Interestingly, the standard[1] makes a distinction between AltText – a purely visual description of the image – and Headline – a summary of the contents. This addresses the concerns of the blog you linked above, but may be overcomplicating it for most use-cases.
[1]: https://www.iptc.org/std/photometadata/specification/IPTC-PhotoMetadata#alt-text-accessibility
@voltagex @gsuberland After further reading the standard, I think the Extended Description (Accessibility) [1] property `Xmp.iptc.ExtDescrAccessibility` should be preferred by browsers instead, because the AltText property is too limited, being capped at 250 characters. ExtDescrAccessibility has no limit by the standard.