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2026-08-25 03:23:06

noy@mastodon.world

So with #mastodon, I can do 10,000 #alttext characters and 5,000 over at #pixelfed

I should use alt text when I need to do a long post then, no?

2026-08-25 08:51:47

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@น้อย คงคะดี First of all, Mastodon offers you 1,500 characters per alt-text. Not 10,000.

Otherwise, no. No, you absolutely shouldn't.

It isn't uncommon among Mastodon users to say, "Okay, we've only got 500 characters in our toots which we also need for mentions and hashtags and even CWs. But we've got 1,500 characters per alt-text! So let's use the alt-texts to expand our character limits!"

What next to nobody on Mastodon knows: Not everyone can access alt-text. There are people who can't, and for whom everything only written in alt-text is lost forever.

Accessing alt-text either requires a screen reader or at least one hand that's working properly enough. You have to hold a phone, or you have to click something, or you have to hover a mouse cursor over the image.

But there are people who are sighted enough that they don't need a screen reader, so they don't have one. At the same time, however, they don't have any sufficiently working hands. Or they don't have hands at all because both their hands were amputated after some accident.

And yet, they can operate a computer. They control it entirely by keyboard. With a headpointer, if need be (a pen strapped to their forehead with which they poke the keys, one by one).

If you write something into the alt-text and only into the alt-text, none of these people will ever be able to read it.

If you really need more characters, then you've got two options.

If you absolutely must stay on Mastodon (because you like the UI, or because you're on an iPhone, and you absolutely must use your favourite Mastodon phone app), you can ask around for servers with a higher character limit.

If you only want to stay in the Fediverse and connected to Mastodon users, and it doesn't have to be Mastodon, but you don't want to go through the hassle of looking for servers with over 500 characters, you can move to, for example

Akkoma (5,000 characters; can be configured by the admin, so the actual limit may be higher)
Misskey (3,000 characters; hard-coded)
Sharkey or CherryPick (3,000 characters; can be configured by the admin, so the actual limit may be higher)
Friendica or Hubzilla (16,777,215 characters; limited by the maximum size of the message text database field)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #Akkoma #Misskey #Sharkey #CherryPick #Friendica #Hubzilla #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #Inclusion #A11y #Accessibility