Hmmm seems like the text doesn't show up on Jerboa
The text isn't supposed to show up. It's alternative text for viewers that can't see the image (or otherwise need it described).
In web browsers, you often can long press the see alt or title text, though. As an aside, title text is kinda similar to alt text, but shows up on hover in desktop (on mobile, it's also long press). It's not meant for accessibility and not usually friendly for it. It's usually for supplementary information and not to describe the image. Eg, an acronym might have title text that defines what the acronym stands for.
This is a really good YSK. Thank you for posting!
Unrelated question, but are you a Stormlight Archive reader? I ask because of your username lol
YES! But please don't spoil. I am on the 4th book, Rythm of War, for many months now.. I have read 50% but it just goes so slowly... The first and second book, The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance, are my favorite books ever. Wit is one of my favourite characters, just so quick and witty and mysterious...
Magnificent. Please enjoy the ride! You've picked quite the good character to be a fan of, I think.
I just finished rereading way of kings Friday and am reading SP3 right now! Hello fellow sanderfan
Someone called me out on this yesterday. On a thread about rblind, so deservedly so. I had no idea this is how it works though. Thanks!
That was me, and my bad. As a blind person myself, I’ve never tried to post an image. I knew including alt text was possible, but I didn’t realize the method was undocumented, and Lemmy doesn’t prompt for it. If I had, I would have offered help, not just snark.
No worries! I never really considered blind people browsing apps, I only became aware of the technical details since the API changes at reddit, so it's still far from a reflex to think about.
Thanks for pointing it out though.
Lemmy should do it similar to how I have seen this done on Mastodon. When you upload an image an overlay shows up to remind the user to describe the image before submitting. The typical user is not going to remember to do this.
An excellent suggestion! I hope you don't mind, but I went ahead and created a feature request for this just now: lemmy-ui#1759
This is really interesting and good to know, thank you for sharing. I'm going to try and remember this for all my images going forward.
For posts that are image based does the OP need to describe them or is that covered somehow already by screen readers?
Excellent question. For image-based posts, there is currently no mechanism to directly embed alt-text. This is likely to change in the future, however, so subscribe to lemmy#1086 for updates.
For now, the general advice is to use the post body to describe the linked image (on Lemmy, all posts are allowed to have "self-post"-like text). This would work by linking the image directly as usual and also embedding the same image in the post text with alt-text included there.
There are no descriptions for image posts. You can however make a post that is both an image and text post at the same time, and throw the description there, until a proper way to put alt text gets implemented.
Any tips for a sighted person on what makes for a good and useful description?
I'm sighted (or, rather, sighted enough that glasses work) as well so I'm not the best person to answer this question.
Hopefully someone will come along and answer. Thanks. :)
Great advice! It’s pretty easy to just double paste the URL into both spots.
Indeed, but just FYI: doing this is actually even worse than leaving a completely empty alt-text!
Why? Because some browsers have experimental support for AI-generated alt-text. If an image has no alt-text, it'll try to generate one, but only if the alt text is empty. This feature will probably become more common in the future, so please try to refrain from putting non-descriptive stuff in the alt-text area.
Thanks for this post!
Question for Jerboa users: how do you zoom in on one of these comment images? They're frequently too small to read.
I'm guessing it is in settings? Also a jerboa user. But I am seeing the comment images at a reasonable size. I'm using the dark theme, and I think I changed the font size, but it's been almost a month since I first installed, so not super sure.
Hmm, I don't see anything for it in the settings. Some of the pictures are a reasonable size to me, I was thinking like pinch and zoom or something.
This message is officially approved by RBlind. Thank you.
You are all making the open web a better place.
You can also copy and paste the image with Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V directly into the post or comment. Then the only think left is adding the alt text.
Great YSK! Definitely doing this from now!
This is wonderful advice, it should be in all introduction material.
But the alt text still shows up?
(If anyone with low vision is reading, the image is just a black question mark from wikimedia)
Not that it's an issue, I just thought it wasn't supposed to
Very nice, thanks for the write up!
there's a need for user documentation probably rather than random posts
Is there a way to embed the actual image itself and not have to rely on a third party like Imgur?
You can click the little image button when commenting or posting, but it uploads it to the instance you're on, which costs them space, so it's probably limited in most instances
And then is there a way to add alt text to that uploaded image?
Yes, when I tried it just now it uploaded the picture and put the same text into the comment that you need to link external images  it just had a link for the newly uploaded photo.
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