The actual minimum standards for alt-text in the Fediverse; CW: long (over 2,800 characters), Fediverse meta, alt-text meta, image description meta
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They say any alt-text is better than no alt-text.
Buuut...
It has to be
useful alt-text. Certain information
must be in it.
Unless it's a digital photograph, tell people the medium.
Always keep in mind who may come across your image post when describing your image. What might they know, and what might they want to know? By the way, yes, this includes people who randomly discover your post in their federated timeline while looking for nothing special.
You can't just mention something being in the image. You must describe what it looks like.
Sizes must never be described in absolute measures, always in comparison with something everyone is familiar with, ideally the height of a person or the sizes of certain body parts.
Unless it's classified or covered by someone's privacy, always mention where an image was taken. If you can't safely assume that everyone who comes across your post is familiar with that place, explain it.
Any persons you've mentioned being in the image?
- Identify them unless you don't know who they are, or unless identifying them infringes on their privacy.
- Explain who they are unless this can safely be assumed basic common knowledge.
- Mention their rough age, their size and, if known, their gender.
- Describe what they look like: skin tone (light, medium light, medium, medium dark, dark), hair colour, hair length, hair style, the same for the beard, if applicable.
- Describe what they wear down to jewellery and accessories, including material if known or identifiable, colours and patterns.
- Describe their mimics, their posture, their gesture.
Any text anywhere in the image? You must transcribe it 100% verbatim. All of it.
Colours, even if named, must always be described using a few basic colours plus brightness plus saturation.
Do not use any technical language, special terminology, jargon or abbreviations. If you absolutely have to, always explain each of them in such a way that everyone understands them with zero prior knowledge. This does not explicitly exclude transcripts of text in your image.
In general, if there's something in your image that average people outside your bubble may not understand, explain it so they will.
And yes, all this has to go into the alt-text because that's how it's done on Mastodon. It's done this way on Mastodon due to its low default character limit, but still, it's done this way.
...So much about describing any image only taking two minutes and 200 characters tops. And then people wonder why I break the last rule and put super-massive image descriptions into the post that took me a day or more to write.
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