Mastodawn

Christophe Sep 7, 2025

@alttexthalloffame also, machine learning algorithms in need for both a text and an image for joint learning.

@christophegueret Right. Shouldn't be a reason to skip it though.

Christophe Sep 7, 2025

@alttexthalloffame that right too 👍

2xfo Sep 7, 2025

@christophegueret @alttexthalloffame
It's pretty easy to describe something accurately and with creativity such that AI will have no idea how to learn from it. I think the most enjoyable alt texts are probably the worst ones for machines to learn from

Sir Toootenstein Sep 7, 2025

@alttexthalloffame That's so good. 😂

@sir_toootenstein I'm here to educate AND entertain!

Sir Toootenstein Sep 7, 2025

@alttexthalloffame Perfect 👍

@Alt Text Hall of Fame "People wondering WTF they're looking at" need an explanation.

But: Explanations do not go into the alt-text! Ever!

That's because not everyone can access alt-text, just like not everyone can see the image in an image post. And yes, this may be due to a physical disability.

Any information that's only in the alt-text, but neither in the post text nor in the image itself, is inaccessible and therefore permanently lost to these people.

Explanations always go into the post text body where everyone can access them!

Money quote-posts from someone who actually does have a physical disability that keeps her from accessing alt-texts:

Deborah wrote the following post Mon, 10 Jul 2023 17:56:06 +0200 @jupiter_rowland “Done right also means accessibility for people who might not know much about your image's subject matter either.” The person who posted this is simply flat out incorrect. Alt text is INACCESSIBLE to many disabled people. If the extra text is important, it needs to be in visible text.
Deborah wrote the following post Mon, 10 Jul 2023 23:30:45 +0200 @jupiter_rowland

I have a disability that prevents me from seeing alt text, because on almost all platforms, seeing the alt requires having a screenreader or working hands. If you post a picture, is there info that you want somebody who CAN see the picture but DOESN’T have working hands to know? Write that in visible text. If you put that in the alt, you are explicitly excluding people like me.

But you don’t have to overthink it. The description of the image itself is a simple concept.

CC so that everyone in this thread will read this, even if they're on Mastodon: @Amy Maybe @{[email protected]} @Sir Toootenstein @Orion Ussner kidder

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta

Jupiter Rowland - [email protected]

@jupiter_rowland That's a good point!

@Alt Text Hall of Fame You may want to boost it so all your many followers get this bit of information, too.

I don't want to tell everyone one by one.

@jupiter_rowland it's not always obvious what it's a photo of just due to framing or angle. usually the alt text will help with this in the way it describes the thing the poster wanted us to take away from it. that's still basic alt text info and not extraneous explanation

i.e. what is this a picture of? i can't really tell what the scale of this object is

alt text: this is a can opener

@forestine If it isn't obvious what an (important) object in an image is, the information goes into the post text.

If the information is necessary for the visual description of the image, i.e. turning the image into words, the information goes both into the alt-text and into the post text.

I've got more than two years of experience at describing images that show things way more obscure than a can opener. And in fact, I always have two image descriptions, one in the alt-text and a much longer one in the post text.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

Netzgemeinde/Hubzilla

@jupiter_rowland i just find that people think they are better photographers than they are. i have visual processing issues so basic alt text does tell me what people are posting. i agree that longer explanations go in the post body, but basic info is helpful.

@forestine Still, information that's only available in the alt-text and neither in the image nor in the post text is inaccessible to people who don't have at least one working hand.

#AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #A11y #Accessibility

Netzgemeinde/Hubzilla

Leonardo Giovanni Scur Apr 28

@jupiter_rowland I don't like putting a human solution to a software problem. I understand and appreciate the need for accessibility, but also at some point able people will just not follow all the conventions, or even just make divergent judgement calls. (Is this an image description or an explanation?)

Make a feature request to your preferred application/s for hands free alt text access.

I have an idea of a jank way to do it on the web interface, but I don't know your requirements.

Jupiter Rowland Apr 28

@Leonardo Giovanni Scur First of all, it isn't about my requirements. Just like, surprise, surprise, Mastodon's alt-text police is not blind.

It's about general accessibility. And it's about Mastodon users acting inclusively towards blind or visually-impaired people and, at the same time, ableistically towards people with other physical disabilities. Just because they cling hard to the extra 1,500 characters that alt-text gives them per image to their meagre character count for posts.

Except for professional Web accessibility experts, literally nobody on Mastodon seems to know what alt-text really is for. Alt-text is meant to be a 1:1 stand-in for an image, in case the image can't be perceived for whichever reason.

Alt-text is not meant to be an additional source of information beyond what information the image conveys.

Mastodon's use of alt-text for extra information beyond the post character limit is just as much alt-text misuse as cramming alt-text with keywords for SEO on websites. Unfortunately, it is so deeply engrained into Mastodon's culture that even the Mastodon devs have played along and added that "ALT" button which most Mastodon users think is the default and the standard Fediverse-wide now.

But let me tell you something:

Mastodon and its forks are most likely the only Fediverse server applications with an alt-text button. And they're far from making up the whole Fediverse.

Misskey and its various forks don't have an alt-text button.

AFAIK, Pleroma-FE and Akkoma-FE don't have an alt-text button, and neither has Mangane.

Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams), Forte, they all don't have an alt-text button.

Lemmy doesn't have an alt-text button. /kbin and Mbin don't have an alt-text button. PieFed doesn't have an alt-text button.

WriteFreely doesn't have an alt-text button. Plume doesn't have an alt-text button. WordPress doesn't have an alt-text button either.

Blogs in general don't have an alt-text button. Forums don't have an alt-text button. Static websites don't have an alt-text button.

Twitter/𝕏 doesn't have an alt-text button. Facebook doesn't have an alt-text button. Instagram doesn't have an alt-text button. Threads doesn't have an alt-text button. Tumblr doesn't have an alt-text button. Flickr doesn't have an alt-text button. Pinterest doesn't have an alt-text button. And so forth.

The W3C doesn't mention alt-text buttons. The WCAG don't mention alt-text buttons.

Why not? Because they're all way behind Mastodon in accessibility?

No, but because their developers know that alt-text is not an additional source of information for sighted people.

Literally the only place anywhere in the Web where alt-text both counts and is actively used as an additional source of information for sighted people is Mastodon. Plus its forks.

How I handle that? I put all needed extra information into the post text. But I'm not on Mastodon. I'm on Hubzilla. My character limit is over 30,000 times higher than on Mastodon.

Seriously, if missing alt-text is sanctioned as ableist, if useless alt-text is sanctioned as ableist, if inaccurate alt-text is sanctioned as ableist, if too lacking alt-text is sanctioned as ableist, then putting exclusive information into alt-text must be sanctioned as ableist just as well.

To those on Mastodon who oh so desperately need more than 500 characters: Move someplace in the Fediverse that has more than 500 characters. There's Fediverse server software from 3,000 characters to over 24,000,000 characters that, nonetheless, is federated with Mastodon.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #Ableism #AbleismMeta #CWAbleismMeta

Netzgemeinde/Hubzilla

Leonardo Giovanni Scur Apr 28

@jupiter_rowland

Just like, surprise, surprise, Mastodon's alt-text police is not blind.

I'm not "Mastodon's alt text police", I'm a human who thinks the text box will be misused, and is clunky to use for all sorts of people, authors included.

I believe that user-agents should make accessible all the metadata in a post, exactly because of the diversity of the Fediverse as software. Just like someone can make an object whose understanding depends on the exact date of posting, even backdating. Or an object that gets frequently edited. Or an object that is referenced by a sock-puppet account.

Except for professional Web accessibility experts, literally nobody on Mastodon seems to know what alt-text really is for.

Exactly. Most people (intersectionally even!) are not accessibility experts. At the very best they have some sense of "hey I should probably describe this image" since the text field is prominent, but virtually nobody will read an accessibility spec.

For my own example, as I cannot speak for others, I often add "impressionistic" details to the alt text of photos, just because the image itself can have qualities beyond just the objects contained in it. Which a sighted person will obviously perceive, even if maybe in a different way than I wrote down.

I think that's a very dogmatic view on the feature. Its a free text field, and if the internet taught us anything is that people will use free text fields for anything.

But let me tell you something: [long list of places that don't have an alt button]

Most of the services you listed rarely even have an useful alt text:

A lot of blog/static just plain don't;
Corporate social media often has erroneous or incomplete machine-generated text with no machine-readable disclosure;
Comics, famously XKCD, but many others I've met along the years, have absolutely unrelated alt text;

Let alone would have use for easy access to it. If anything Mastodon is the place where you can most reliably find useful alt text on the internet, by volume if not by ratio.

My character limit is over 30,000 times higher than on Mastodon.

No I don't think people put text in the alt box exclusively because of character limits, I've seen plenty of people, myself included, who put stuff there despite a generous limit on the instance.

I cannot speak to ableism or not, but I'm grateful that "people on the internet put the text, but on the wrong box" is the problems we get to discuss :)

Ygor Sep 7, 2025

@jupiter_rowland In that case, wouldn't it be better to have an option in the client to display the alt text below each piece of media without having to click anything? Because sometimes we don't even have enough space to properly explain the media in the post itself due to the 500-character limit. So I guess we'd have to make a thread? Does that also mean that we should only add one image per post, since some people can't click to expand it?

@Ygor In that case, wouldn't it be better to have an option in the client to display the alt text below each piece of media without having to click anything?
The problem with this is that it would have to be built into

all official Web frontends of all Fediverse server applications
all third-party Web frontends for Fediverse server applications
all desktop and mobile apps for anything in the Fediverse

Altogether, that's well over a hundred user interfaces. And anyone who can't open an alt-text may use any of these, so you can't just pick one or two to modify accordingly. Way too much of an effort just so that nobody will have to change their ways.

Because sometimes we don't even have enough space to properly explain the media in the post itself due to the 500-character limit. So I guess we'd have to make a thread? Does that also mean that we should only add one image per post, since some people can't click to expand it?
As a short-term solution, or if you absolutely, absolutely must stay on whichever vanilla Mastodon server you're currently on, a thread is the easiest solution, although long posts cut into threads annoy some users in certain non-Mastodon parts of the Fediverse.

However, if you regularly post images that require extensive explanations, there are better solutions in the Fediverse that let you post everything in one piece, for example:

Go find a Mastodon server with a modified character limit
Misskey (3,000 characters, hard-coded)
Sharkey (3,000 characters, admin-configurable; some servers have higher limits)
Pleroma (5,000 characters, admin-configurable; some servers have higher limits)
Akkoma (5,000 characters, admin-configurable; some servers have higher limits)
Friendica (over 16.7 million characters, database field size; no native iOS app)
Hubzilla (over 16.7 million characters, database field size; no native apps at all)
(streams) (over 24 million characters, database field size; no native apps at all)
Forte (over 24 million characters, database field size; no native apps at all)

All these are part of the Fediverse, and all these are (optionally in Hubzilla's case) federated with Mastodon, so you can post to the same people from there as from Mastodon, and you can follow the same people there as on Mastodon.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Misskey #Sharkey #Pleroma #Akkoma #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta

Netzgemeinde/Hubzilla

Ygor Sep 8, 2025

@jupiter_rowland I still feel like "never put explanations in the alt text" is the wrong framing when the real problem is "alt text isn't accessible to everyone". It should be, that's the whole point. Text is a different medium than image and video, so it will naturally contain different information that someone might want to know, even if they can see the image. So at this point this would imply that alt text should just not be used at all, and everything should be in the post.

aburka 🫣Sep 8, 2025

@ygor @jupiter_rowland I would think people who are using a computer without functioning hands will be using a web browser/extension that has ways to click things using the keyboard. I just have a hard time believing the alt text button on Mastodon is the final boss of accessibility that they would not have an existing solution for

Jupiter Rowland Sep 8, 2025

@aburka 🫣 @Ygor The very definition of alt-text is that it's a written replacement for the image. It is meant to convey the relevant visual information in the image. It is not meant to convey any information not immediately available in the image.

Alt-text was not invented for Mastodon. It's way older than Mastodon. It was made for websites. And on a website, the alt-text describes what can be seen in the image, and if necessary, either a caption right below the image or the text in which the image is embedded explains the image.

The real problem is Mastodon's tiny character limit. Mastodon offers 1,500 characters in alt-text, but only a measly 500 in the actual post, minus the CW, minus mentions, minus hashtags. Thus, Mastodon's culture has pretty much declared it okay to put additional information into the alt-text and, when I mention that this is not accessible to the point of actually being ableist, blame all user interfaces that aren't the Mastodon 4.4.x Web interface.

What's even worse is that this is widely, namely all across Mastodon itself, considered the one and only Fediverse standard. And for newbies and people in Mastodon-only bubbles, this is not the Fediverse standard, this is the Fediverse because the Fediverse is only Mastodon.

For comparison: I'm not on Mastodon, not even on a fork. Hubzilla is ten months older than Mastodon, based on Friendica from the same creator which is about four and a half years older than Mastodon, and both are developed completely independently from Mastodon. When Mastodon was launched, it immediately federated with both. Their character limit is defined by the size of the database field that stores posts: over 16.7 million characters. And even beyond that, they've got lots of features which many Mastodon users wish "the Fediverse" had and even features that are completely unimaginable for Mastodon users.

In the early Fediverse, it was these two that set the quality standards. But then came Mastodon with its intentionally, painfully limited set of features and a character count which Twitter refugees considered huge, but which is actually tiny, and for which there is no technical reason. Not only did Mastodon present itself to new users as an enclosed network of its own named "Fediverse", but by doing so and quickly growing to a staggering size, it forced itself into the position of the (perceived) Fediverse gold standard.

Now we're in a situation where some 99% of all the millions of registered Mastodon users spent their first months or even years believing that the Fediverse is only Mastodon, and in fact, many still believe that. Those who learn the hard way (e.g. by having a 4,000-character comment full of text formatting dropped into their timelines) that there's much more to the Fediverse than Mastodon still think that Eugen Rochko has invented the Fediverse and ActivityPub, that Mastodon was there first, that Friendica, Hubzilla & Co. are "intruders" that were only recently created to connect to the Mastodon Fediverse, and that if something surprisingly turns out different from Mastodon in some way, it's broken.

This is also where Mastodon's culture came into play. Mastodon's culture as we know it today was completely coined in spring/summer 2022 by the February/March 2022 Twitter migration wave that was caused by Elon Musk's announcement to buy out Twitter. This migration wave was so huge that, at least within their own bubbles, these Twitter migrants hugely outnumbered the already present Mastodon users to the point of barely even noticing that Mastodon already had users, sometimes leading to the idea that Mastodon itself didn't exist before February 2022. And so there was no influence on Mastodon's culture from Mastodon veterans and even less from non-Mastodon Fediverse users who never had anything to say on Mastodon anyway.

And so Mastodon has a culture that's based on Mastodon 3.x, that doesn't even include new features from Mastodon 4.0. And this culture is being forced upon the whole rest of the Fediverse while disregarding how the rest of the Fediverse does things itself. To many, "the Fediverse" is a Twitter-cloning microblogging platform invented by Eugen Rochko with no more than 500 characters, full stop. Anything that's caught deviating from this, from Mastodon, is disturbing and wrong.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #Friendica #Hubzilla #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #MastodonCulture

Netzgemeinde/Hubzilla

@alttexthalloffame yes, but it always means extra effort. I hope it is worth it. I have no idea if my ALT text is being used by anybody

https://alttexthalloffame.org

@askans It is!

Alt Text Hall of Fame

Celebration of the effort, ingenuity, and creativity that goes into making the web a friendlier and more inclusive place, one captioned image at a time.

Alt Text Hall of Fame - Celebrating well-written image descriptions.

Mark Whybird Mar 16

@alttexthalloffame @askans Nice :)

@AltAfterDark, which was inspired by you a pinned post there says, is probably worth a mention, even if it is just a coy one-liner noting its’ existence.

@askans @alttexthalloffame i read the text any time i come across a photo. i find them very helpful. and many people won't boost a post if there is no text

@forestine @alttexthalloffame

That is good to know. I never read them, but I try to make an effort to write them

mcSlibinas Sep 7, 2025

@askans @forestine @alttexthalloffame some of alt texts are very useful, some of them have info + good joke in it 👍

@mcSlibinas @forestine @alttexthalloffame

I am lacking humour

mcSlibinas Sep 7, 2025

@askans @forestine @alttexthalloffame then, for an example: pic of some foreign car and alt text filled with car brand, model and year.
Useful! 👍

Caroline Kinlund Sep 7, 2025

@askans I am allo-abled (no difficulties with visual or aural processing) and I still look for and read alt text every time, if nothing else because I like learning how others are writing alt text so I can inform and improve my own descriptive captions.

@forestine @alttexthalloffame

@caroline @forestine @alttexthalloffame that is a fair point! I should be a bit less lazy

Chaotically Chloe

Apr 2

@askans @alttexthalloffame as someone who is autistic, it's helpful for me as sometimes I don't understand what I'm supposed to be looking at. I also find writing alt text useful to keep my attention to detail sharp.

Alt Text Hall of Fame Apr 2

@syphist @askans Everyone wins! 💪

Jupiter Rowland Apr 2

@Syphist :verifiedtrans: @Askan 🇪🇺 @Alt Text Hall of Fame Unfortunately, those who also explain their images pretty much always make the mistake of doing so in alt-text. Then again, most of them are on Mastodon with a minuscule character limit, so they don't have any room for explanations in their post texts.

As for myself, everywhere that I still post images (as rarely as that happens), I'm glad to have eight-digit character limits that I don't have to worry about. I'm glad because what both my memes and my original images show is so obscure and so niche that it requires lots and lots and lots of explanation.

On the other hand, if my image posts are described and explained sufficiently enough to not be blocked by Mastodon users, they're way too long to not be blocked by Mastodon users.

At least, when I post memes, I link to external explanations whenever I can, especially KnowYourMeme for meme template explanations. Yes, some may find external links inconvenient and prefer explanations right in the post.

But seriously, the alternative to one link to KnowYourMeme might be six or seven or more explanations and well over 10,000 characters of text just for the meme template (the used meme templates, the concepts behind the meme templates, the places where these meme templates originated etc.). On top of that would come the explanation(s) of what my implementation of the meme is about. I've been there and done that.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

Askan 🇪🇺 (@[email protected])

8.55K Posts, 852 Following, 352 Followers · photo-vegan Deutsch, English, Francais - Farmers' markets, selfhosting, against concentrated power - searchable tootfinder

Bonn.social

@alttexthalloffame visual processing issue here, i'm kind of a venn diagram of the orange and red shirts

@alttexthalloffame oh another use is if your server has a translate function, you can translate the alt text for memes and comics into your language, which is pretty neat

@forestine Yes, love that feature!

Arlon Sep 7, 2025

@alttexthalloffame Also people that are learning a given language

Sailor Pallas Sep 7, 2025

Alt text is also useful/needed for:

People with dyslexia and similar conditions
People with visual processing disorders
People with migraines
Colorblind people
People who can't read

Climate Jenny 2.1 Sep 7, 2025

@palladiumasteroid And for people who need to improve their ability to describe a picture in words, which is a worthwhile exercise in noticing what’s important to see, and how to best describe it.

PaulaToThePeople 😷Sep 7, 2025

@palladiumasteroid @alttexthalloffame

Also deaf people. Alt text describing the spoken words in a video that is.

And people who don't understand the language of the video you're posting but use e.g. Mastodon's built in translation feature which translates AltText.

And oftentimes I just enjoy reading AltText (sometimes I need it because I don't understand what a person is trying to convey with the media).

Sailor Pallas Sep 7, 2025

Exactly! D/deaf, people with auditory processing disorders, etc too.

I'm not on Mastodon so I'm not aware of all its features

I have troubles seeing certain colours and differentiating shades of the same colour and also reading text in anything that isn't pure black theme (but specially light theme) and I can't read red/pink/magenta text in any of them; so I rely on alt text for screenshots mainly and same images like flags.

Jeremy Mallin Sep 7, 2025

@palladiumasteroid

@alttexthalloffame

People whose mobile devices make it difficult or impossible to zoom images.

Lukas Sep 7, 2025

@alttexthalloffame
bottom right is a feel

nLupo

Sep 7, 2025

@alttexthalloffame I'm usually the person on the bottom right, because sometimes I have a bad time recognizing what is on the picture. I'm not sure whether I have some neurological condition.

Andrew Woods Sep 7, 2025

@alttexthalloffame I’d like to see this drawn as a group hug 😁

devolute Sep 7, 2025

@alttexthalloffame I know it's terribly unfashionable to say so, but also #SEO

JP Sep 7, 2025

@alttexthalloffame also great for searching! "what was that funny image of a cat i posted last year?" etc

@jplebreton @alttexthalloffame

Karis Sep 7, 2025

you can search for things using the AltText.. 😯 how does that work?

JP Sep 7, 2025

@qaris @alttexthalloffame On all the fediverse frontends I've used, when you do a normal text search, it'll return posts where the alt text matches that search, even if the post itself has no text (ie just an image with alt text)