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.

@mwichary Main problem is that social media platforms convert images into their own preset formats for storage, losing metadata in the process. Could be done with the MakerNote field in EXIF, but some manufacturers use that for other things. Alternatively, you can zip the alt text and cat it onto the end of the image. Image will work as normal, but change the file extension to .zip and you can recover the alt. Can trigger security issues though, as the filesize won't match image size.
@_thegeoff This feels eminently solvable, though?

@mwichary Absolutely, just as we have more than enough charitable money in the world to make sure nobody is ever hungry again.

Best option I can see is for the JPEG/W3C lot to introduce a new standard specifically including alt text, with all of the main social media and blogging platforms signing up to it, so it gradually becomes the default.That's easy to suggest though...