@mjgardner
Awesome, thanks for the clarification, will edit!
@gizmomathboy @w3c
Posts in English
You mean it should show italics, bold and perhaps even link content?
😛
@quadratur
I understand what you mean but when people were using it for tooltips they were not describing images in the correct way. It created a lot of confusion as to the purpose of alt texts. I don't think I could go as far as calling it a feature ;)
As you rightly point out, title had this purpose.
I agree completely with your observation about exclusive content. I love having access to all alt text visibly here in my Fediverse instance. I'll be making exactly this point in my talk later today.
It's a huge shortcoming in browsers that it's so difficult to view for most people.
@grin I loved trying out Lynx and showing it off in some of my early accessibility talks :)
Some photos I see posted here are worth attention. I will, however, not repeat/boost the ones without image descriptions. And I see examples of those every day.
My wish is for #accessibility to be given more priority when posting images in social networks. In my personal experience it’s gotten a bit worse with the growth of the fediverse.
Later today I’m running an hour long session on writing Alt text and image descriptions, for people enrolled in Ambition Empower*.
Thinking perhaps I should do a public access one as well, if there’s interest. Image descriptions can benefit everyone.
*If you’re a designer or design leader, the Empower program may interest you:
https://ambitiongrp.com/empower/
I just visited 15 blogs about dogs. I wanted to see how well they described all the fun pictures of dogs and their owners. As it turns most alt texts were less than adequate, if they even had any. Some were just stuffed with keywords, and some appeared to be written by AI's, failing to add context.
After 14 sites visited, I finally I found a blog about dogs that does a great job with alt text. Would it surprise you to learn that it is a website about leader dogs?
#accessibility #a11y
https://www.leaderdog.org/
A bit of trivia about alt text.
The ALT attribute for describing images was introduced in a 1993 Internet Draft about HTML. At this time many people online were still using text-only browsers and people wanted to know what the images were about. Some people just couldn't afford to wait for them to download.
In 1999, with the release of HTML 4.01, the ALT attribute was made to be a requirement for the img and area tags.
1999 is also the year Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0 were published. The very first checkpoint starts like this:
"1.1 Provide a text equivalent for every non-text element (e.g., via "alt", "longdesc", or in element content)."
What should be a point of internet embarrassment: Microsoft's Internet Explorer rendered the ALT attribute in the wrong way, as a tooltip, all the way until 2009 when IE8 was released. Microsoft got the standard wrong for ten years. This of course also led to many developers using it incorrectly as a tooltip.
Fast forward to 2023 and the ALT attribute is unfortunately still something not many people who build websites care much about. And I rarely see it in the curriculum of courses that provide education for web editors and writers.
#accessibility #a11y
Edits: Removed reference to HTML 1.2 (this was not a html version but a version number of the Internet Draft). Also changed HTML 4.1 to 4.01. See comments by @mjgardner
@janboddez No worries at all, I enjoy discussing and thinking about this.
@janboddez
😊 This is clear-cut to me as all users can not be expected to understand that their comment on a social media post will end up on a blog page. Thus this happens without consent as the understanding is not there unless the social media post itself has a disclaimer. That does not mean it's illegal, just that it's not fair to expect that all users are okay with this.
(Full disclosure, I've implemented tools like this in the past with Twitter, pulling in all mentions of a blog post. I also thought it was cool when not fully considering impact and consequences)
The other interesting issue is that automated stuff like this will mean that the blog owner may have illegal content posted to their page through the same mechanism. Comments can mention third parties by name and use hateful language, or include copyrighted material for example.
I think some of the most common errors of assumption when going ahead with these tools are:
1. It's technically possible, so must be okay.
2. Everybody who posts on social media wants to be seen as broadly and widely as possible in any context
3. If you're here you must accept that your content will be republished all over the place
4. Nobody could possibly be harmed
5. It's legal so there is no problem
6. It's cool…
@janboddez Thanks for sharing! Yes, there could be a lot of work done to improve Privacy By Design in this space. I believe this is where all the excitement around federated social networking may meet a lot of frustration.
@InsertUser Yes, I'm using my own install of Akkoma since a little more than two weeks.
https://akkoma.social/
@janboddez
Ha, that is cool. Need to try and implement something like that.
@hacdias @en
@david Hehe. I hear you.
@anant Thanks. I feel that I can have the Mastodon logo in the header of my blog and people will recognise it. Having the Akkoma logo would confuse more than help.
Existential crisis when I feel I have to write out my "Mastodon username" on my different websites but can't say that I'm not actually on Mastodon because that would be unnecessarily confusing and require 20 more minutes of time to explain.
@ShmosKnows @JMMaok
Agree. I suppose this could also be built into apps but yes, I'd prefer a max width / height that I can set for my instance or profile. With the possibility to override when called for.
One way to lower resource usage on servers (and save on bandwidth in general) is to not upload original size photos.
On iPhone, when uploading, you can click where it says ”Actual size” and change it to Medium for example. It’s a fraction of the size but often good enough for sharing and many won’t see the difference.
My intent is not to police your choices. If you want to upload for the purpose of high quality you should do so. This is a tip for the times when good enough works.
#FediTips
@jamescridland
Ha, very cool. Kudos for doing this.
@danyork
