Marcin Wichary6d ago

I’m curious: Did people/apps ever attempt to bundle alt text with the image as metadata? (Like EXIF?)

That feels like the right place to put it, so then it could be read by apps/browsers, and also travel with the image on save etc. Rather than specifying it as out-of-band text like we do today.

Show threadSmoljaguar
@mwichary https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/07/should-you-embed-alt-text-inside-image-metadata/ @Edent has written about this a few times
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…

Terence Eden’s Blog
Apr 9 at 11:50amWeb
Show threadMarcin Wichary5d ago
@Smoljaguar Thanks! While I don’t disagree with aspects of this, it feels like a strange reason to say “no.” E.g. saying “yes” if you can still contextually override/change alt text as needed (as today) seems like it would be a net positive to me.