Email or username:

Password:

Forgot your password?
Top-level
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.

7 comments
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

matt

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

@lukethelibrarian @pluralistic @alttexthalloffame @Gargron @AltTextHealthCheck

Go Up