@ipg also: when someone posts a picture of a celebrity or politician and you would recognise the name but you are bad at recognising people visually

@ipg I can definitely vouch for the slow internet case lol

@ipg Yes! I asked a question of a poster about their image and they said it was in the alt text and honestly that was how I figured out about alt texts many uses!

And hey #alttext folks. Here's another accessibility hack: your hashtags should use "camel back" lettering. #AltText not #alttext . This is for folks who utilize certain listening aids: without the clear word separation of a capital letter the readers can completely garble the meaning.

#Mastodon #AltText

@ipg@wetdry.world also for nature photographers to post the species’ names so i don’t need to describe what they look like to google- rarely worked for plants ​:floofTired:​

@ipg @alshra
Another way alt text can be useful is identifying people, e.g. government ministers — which minister, which country / state

@ipg and machine learning! 😏

@ipg A lot of accessibility accomodations, from ramps to alt text, help far more more people than you might think on first thought

@ipg I think in some places, Alt Text works for filtering as well

@ipg and on the websites in general if the picture as in the file disappears or fails to load, the alt text is shown instead next to that "broken picture" icon

@ipg@wetdry.world I don't get why it's so hard for people to understand this ​:puniko_angry2:​

@ipg@wetdry.world okay but where is the dog with the banana on its head? i want to see the dog... ​:neocat_bottom:​

@ipg since I am very bad to describe the images, is the bot that describe the image in the first comment, a useful workaround? Or do I have to copy the bot generated text in my image?

@ipg those are accessibility needs tho. accessible means, well, being able to access, not just euphemism for disability

@ipg
7th reason : training AIs…
:/

@ipg

All those things.
Plus it can be a great vehicle for mischief and subversion.

@ipg You can also put humorous or snide commentary in there like an Easter egg. In addition to an actual description, of course.

@ipg plus having a copy-able version of text in an image!

@ipg dont forget: for ready tagged AI trainings data! 🦾🤖

@ipg

I greatly appreciate this content. But your alt-text needs the heading ("why use alt text") added, which, let's not lie to ourselves, is very funny. :>

@ipg content findability but also ability to filter

@ipg don't forget efficient AI ingestion! That's certainly in the list.

@ipg "Translation. Alt text can be translated" - in the web interface of mastodon, I see no way to translate an image alt text (contrary to the normal text of the post) - actually, even the possibility to see it if the image can be loaded appeared on my server only days ago...

@ipg
@cmconseils ⤴️
@dbenoist

@ipg also AI can help with alt text, show it the photo and it'll have a go. check the AI response for holusinations etc, then post the AI output as the alt text.

@ipg seems like alt text is only viewable on desktop browsers. Haven't seen how to view it on phone browsers.

@ipg @nkizz funny enough this image didn’t load on my instance but I understood it from the alt text!