WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

clear text image descriptions and alt text with user-created content

for

From: deborah.kaplan
Date: Mar 20, 2012 7:09AM

Over the last year, I've noticed that a lot more posters on
social media sites have been putting image descriptions in clear
text under images. I'm pretty sure this started because Tumblr
makes it difficult and sometimes impossible to supply alt text,
and the large number of social justice types on Tumblr were quick
to respond to complaints from their friends who needed the alt
text. But I've certainly seen the practice spread to other social
media: blogs, forums, etc.

I'm all in favor of this -- a lot of times in web accessibility
we assume that the people creating content are web designers, but
in this age of social media, the majority of content most of us
consume is actually created by a slew of amateurs. When authoring
tools fall down on the job, kudos to that slew of amateurs for
providing as much accessible content as is possible. But I have
two questions that come out of this trend:

1. When there is a clear text image description, what should the
alt text on the image be?

2. In contexts (such as social media) where he clear text image
description is welcome or permissible, should be used even if the
authoring tool allows alt (and possibly longerdesc)? I can see
how it encourages good behavior among other content creators in
the social media world, and there are definitely people who
aren't using screenreaders who benefit from captions (such as
magnification users).

-Deborah