I am frequently on Piefed (Lemmy) and occasionally on Mastodon and I noticed they use ALT tags for images way more on Mastodon than we do here.
Anyone know why this is? it is more about the software or the culture or maybe just historical?
It seems like a good idea to always set the ALT tag for an image post on both services, and I’ve seen many ppl on the other site say they won’t boost (share) any image posts without ALT tags (since vision-impaired people really benefit from them).
Just curious…
My version of the Jerboa app doesn’t explicitly say how to add alt text, so I think it’s partially an app support issue. I only know how to do it for inline comment images.
Boosting itself is closer to Mastodon terminology to begin with. The idea of reblogging a single comment or reply isn’t as prevalent, as much as crossposting a thread.
I’ve added alt text as part of links in most of my comments with images or videos, I just don’t know if anyone has seen them? Can you view this one?
Visible on Voyager by tapping the image
I access piefed via web browser and no, there’s no way I can find to see your alt text.
The impression I get from these comments is that this issue is really both about the software (Devs don’t prioritize alt text much) and cultural (users don’t either). Which came first and led to the other? Who knows…
The only way i know is if you select “view source”.
What masto does is it adds it both to “alt” and to “title”. “title” makes it show up in a tooltip, “alt” is for screenreaders and whatnot.
I forgot how to add title/hover text on an inline image… let me test:
Ok I remember now. You have to add a space then double quotation marks after your URL, within the parentheses. This image has both alt text and title text. I’m not going to do both on the regular.
Oh nice! That works on our end! (lemmy web)
The software should just do that for you by default, IMO. No extra effort.
– Frost