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🆕 blog! “The Idiot Sandwich - On Embedding Alt Text”
Alt text is great. It allows people who can't see an image to understand what that image represents.
For example, the code might say: <img src="whatever.gif" alt="Two cute kittens are playing on a blanket">
If you are blind, you get an idea of what's being conveyed by that image. If you're on a train…
👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/11/the-idiot-sandwich-on-embedding-alt-text/
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#a11y #accessibility #AltText #HTML
@Edent I miss longdesc. I like the idea of a short alt, and a longer description for more.
@Edent
It's an interesting subject but I think the selected examples reflect bad, probably AI-generated alt text; not including the visual text is a big error. In almost no context would that alt text be appropriate.
No social media client should automatically use embedded alt text but presenting it as a draft to the message author could be very handy, especially for popular meme images. "Homer Simpson receding into a bush" (maybe add "meme" to the end) would be sufficient alt text in most cases and a good start for others.
Such images are like that language made of idioms from Star Trek (a comparison made in the Wikipedia article about it), Homer (Simpson) is our Shaka, when the walls fell. Not everyone will understand the image's meaning visually or the alt text written in this way but IYKYK.
@Edent I think the alt text needs to reflect the context of the image.
When you chose to include the image, what information were you intending it to convey? That's the information to make available to non-/less-sighted folks via alt text.
A low-res JPEG of a funny meme may want very different alt text depending on whether it is used to add some humour or to illustrate image compression artifacts.
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