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Eugen Rochko

With today's update, we've improved the look of the alt text modal you see when composing new posts on #Mastodon, and added some information about the significance of alt text for accessibility and how to write it.

A screenshot of the alt text modal in Mastodon's web app, with a preview of the image (in this case, our elephant mascot), a text field underneath it, a character counter, a button to automatically detect text on the image, and a help button that opens a popover with the headline "What is alt text?" The text that follows reads:

"Alt text provides image descriptions for people with vision impairments, low-bandwidth connections, or those seeking extra context.

You can improve accessibility and understanding for everyone by writing clear, concise, and objective alt text.

- Capture important elements
- Summarize text in images
- Use regular sentence structure
- Avoid redundant information
- Focus on trends and key findings in complex visuals (like diagrams or maps)"
22 comments
jfor

@Gargron

Why is this so?

Plus it opens in a new window

SBartsch โœ…

@Gargron Danke ๐Ÿ™ Deine/eure Arbeit ist so wichtig (gerade in der aktuellen Lage) :mastolove:

Resolviendo la incรณgnita ๐ŸŒ

@Gargron Great. I saw it yesterday. There wasn't any rectangle covering part of the image.

Serf de Web

@Gargron Is there a setting to keep alt text from popping up when the cursor crosses an image?

Jeri Dansky

@Gargron If the image is a relatively short text block, why would you summarize it rather than just including the exact text?

Kierkegaanks regretfully

@Gargron Browsers have a great interface but app devs need to make alt text more functional and less petty torture

This is ios Mastodon โ€ฆ and sometimes like now you canโ€™t even access the awful interface below the keyboard

Allen

@Gargron I don't need my alt-text to be prettier. I need to be able to add alt-text to images I want to boost when OP failed to do so. When will that feature be added?

Laurent Cimon

@Gargron I know he doesnโ€™t have internet but thank John Mastodon for me next time you see him

webhat

@Gargron it's not just for visual impairment. Someone writing AltText also enables someone who can't understand the language which is in the image to translate it to a language they do understand

Fubaroque

@Gargron Itโ€™s difficult to close the popup. Do you really intend that I scroll to the next toot and click there to make it go away? How about just clicking on the popup to close it? That seems a reasonable choice.

Eugen Rochko

@fubaroque Are you referring to the popout pictured in the screenshot? I'm not sure how that fits in with scrolling. There is no scrolling on the modal dialog nor is there a next post to scroll to. You can click anywhere to close it again.

Fubaroque

@Gargron Indeed how am I supposed to close it? The only way I found is scroll to the next toot and click there.

Like I said how about closing it when I click on the popup itself?

Peter Saathoff-Harshfield

@Gargron Someone else said this too, but if there is text in an image, that exact text should be in the alt text, not just a summary of it.

a1ba@$INSTANCE$host$
@Gargron alt text still allows for more characters than post itself.
a1ba@$INSTANCE$host$
@Gargron at this point, if I will ever use mastodon again, it would be easier to post 1x1 image and use alt text as a body
D4v

@Gargron I wish we had some automatic AI alt text composer without having to write it ๐Ÿ˜Š is it planned?

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