No, image descriptions don't necessarily go into alt-text; CW: multiple posts with thousands of characters each, non-Mastodon user questioning Mastodon culture
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Full-blown #
ImageDescriptions in #
AltText are a #
Mastodon invention. No, really. And Mastodon is the only place where you can really have a justification for them.
First of all, "Mastodon" does not stand for the whole #
Fediverse. The length of this post should be a give-away that I might not even be on Mastodon myself. Because I'm not.
Next, allow me to elaborate.
Look at all those many articles on the Web that explain what alt-text is and what it should look like. Unless they were explicitly written for Mastodon, they don't take Mastodon or the Fediverse in general into consideration.
If they speak of "social media", what they mean are #
? with a limit of 500 characters in alt-text and #
Facebook with a limit of only 100 characters. Also, they take into account that older #
ScreenReaders are limited to 200 characters, and #
blind or #
VisuallyImpaired #
ScreenReader users are normally the
only target audience for alt-text.
Thus, these articles say that alt-text should be short and concise and limited to what matters in the image within the context of the webpage or article or post it is part of.
Then came Mastodon. With it came a new culture of #
inclusion and more or less voluntarily-granted #
accessibility, also because it became a safe haven for #
disabled people who had fled from the rampant social Darwinism on #
Twitter.
Not only that, but Mastodon raised its alt-text character limit from 450 to 1,500 characters. For each image, not for all of them together, as far as I know.
The next thing that happened was that people suggested image descriptions in alt-text to be more detailed. Instead of being limited to what's important, they should fully describe images. For one, a detailed image description could help even sighted people understand an image better, for example, if it contains something technical.
Besides, since most Fediverse users mostly or exclusively use the Fediverse on mobile phones, another use-case for image descriptions emerged, namely as a replacement for the image proper when the network is so weak that the image doesn't load.
And then people started writing detailed image descriptions. Yes, in alt-text. It felt only natural to do so because most people who started describing images in alt-text had never written an #
ImageDescription before. And alt-text is what describes an image, right?
On Mastodon, it was and still is actually fully justified: You have 1,500 characters for alt-text per image. For the post itself, you only have 500 characters. And these 500 characters have to include the post text, extra hashtags and even the content warnings. You may end up with fewer than 100 characters for an image description. Alt-text grants you you 1,400 characters more.
However, just because it's what everyone does on Mastodon because they don't have a choice, doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. Especially not if you do have a choice.
(To be continued...)
