Alt Text is important, this is not funny

I learned something new out of this article coming off of mastodon. The alt text attribute can have 1,000 characters. I did not know this.

GW Micro assisted me with some coding assistance when I was using their product and got stuck because my forms were not talking when tabbing through it.

I know that Freedom Scientific can possibly assist where needed if I contact them for help, or even other assistive tech company.

But this article also touches on something that sighted people should learn about and that is the alternitive text attribute.

This does two different things. For someone sighted, who may have issues with seeing the image clearly, it could describe the image to them by just hovering the mouse over it. Just like links now giving you the URL just by hovering it, alt text can be used in forms to clarify for example only enter numbers, or please enter a full email address.

Those types of items are part of the title tag within forms, and can have required in the place of the star which is not spoken for those who have punctuation turned completely off like I do.

To be honest, I have never understood meme’s, and i honestly have no interest in them, just because I can’t see them myself.

Coming across this article, I could understand now how they could be of use, but I don’t see myself using them, just like I don’t use emogies much if at all. I occasionally use a thumbs up or down or something, but it is very rare.

The BBC article talking about the alt text, how valuable is, and how companies responded to the joke that wasn’t is titled Click here: Twitter alt text meme that isn’t funny for blind people and should be read if you’re sighted.

Mastodon and this community are pushing for alt text in image descriptions for that reason. I tend to skip a lot of these, frankly because I don’t care, but if I find something of interest, I appreciate it and may boost it.

I know there are people who post art, and alt text describing it is the right thing to do. This is one reason why i am not one in to art and don’t care for it much.

Let’s give the sighted the tools to understand why it is important to use alternitive text. Thanks for reading, make it a great day!