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Alt Text Hall of Fame

@pluralistic I'd love to hear @Gargron's thoughts on this.

mastodon.social/@Gargron/11211

"Content created by others must be attributed"

Sounds like we might need to add a new field separate from alt text?

Only about a third of images have description (as per @AltTextHealthCheck), and who knows how much of that is actually usable. That's really bad.

1 April at 17:33 | Wall-to-wall | Open on mastodon.social
9 comments
Cory Doctorow

@alttexthalloffame @Gargron @AltTextHealthCheck

IMO - as an avid caption writer - the most useful thing would be a field in IMAGES (e.g. EXIF) that could contain the descriptions and maintain them between services. My workflow is farcically complex and tracking descriptions across days is just a bridge too far, but if I could embed the description in the image so that it was available wherever I posted the image, that would be huge.

1 April at 17:46 | Open on mamot.fr
Alt Text Hall of Fame

@pluralistic @Gargron @AltTextHealthCheck I've seen people make this point about alt text being part of EXIF data, this would definitely make the most sense.

1 April at 17:58 | Open on mastodon.social
lukethelibrarian

@pluralistic @alttexthalloffame @Gargron @AltTextHealthCheck the EXIF 2.1 and 2.2 metadata standards include attributes for both ImageDescription and Copyright. The definition for the latter identifies it as "copyright holder" but it could be used for broader license information.

1 April at 18:01 | Open on mastodon.world
Alt Text Hall of Fame

@lukethelibrarian @pluralistic @Gargron @AltTextHealthCheck Great! We'd then just need Mastodon (and the rest of the fediverse platforms) to allow editing and displaying this information, without having to change the ActivityPub standard.

1 April at 18:04 | Open on mastodon.social
lukethelibrarian

@alttexthalloffame @pluralistic @Gargron @AltTextHealthCheck maybe, maybe not. Cory said this was about reusability within his own POSSE process, so it's really about whether the tools he uses as part of that process can populate Alt Text based on the EXIF ImageDescription, or could be modified to do so.

1 April at 18:44 | Open on mastodon.world
lukethelibrarian

@alttexthalloffame @pluralistic @Gargron @AltTextHealthCheck also note that embedding alt text in EXIF data is far from a panacea for reusability of images. @eric captured some really important considerations at ericwbailey.website/published/ - but he's mostly looking at the reuse of alt text between different users/contexts.

Cory's POSSE use-case is different: he's reusing/syndicating images across platforms, but all tied back to a single publication/context.

@alttexthalloffame @pluralistic @Gargron @AltTextHealthCheck also note that embedding alt text in EXIF data is far from a panacea for reusability of images. @eric captured some really important considerations at ericwbailey.website/published/ - but he's mostly looking at the reuse of alt text between different users/contexts.

1 April at 18:50 | Open on mastodon.world
matt

sounds like <cite>...</cite>
and not necessarily same as copyright holder.

@lukethelibrarian @pluralistic @alttexthalloffame @Gargron @AltTextHealthCheck

1 April at 18:19 | Open on indieweb.social
linguistic chaos goblin

@alttexthalloffame Oh, Gargron's thoughts on image descriptions are not going to help here, he's said "when you're trying to make a point, or maybe you're out and about somewhere  and you're just posting something quickly, you don't always have the time to type it in. So it's a good attitude to watch out and make sure that everything is accessible, but it can go overboard."

platformer.news/mastodon-inter

An interview answer from one Eugen Rothko: "Some people take offense to being reminded to put alt text on pictures. And honestly, I kind of get it, because when you're trying to make a point, or maybe you're out and about somewhere  and you're just posting something quickly, you don't always have the time to type it in. So it's a good attitude to watch out and make sure that everything is accessible, but it can go overboard."
1 April at 20:09 | Open on mspsocial.net
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