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2026-04-29 20:58:36

valkyrie_pilot via Alt Text Hall of Fame

valk@social.treehouse.systems

Alt text question: If there is a clearly unintentional misspelling in text in a picture, do you include it in the alt text?

2026-04-29 21:52:50

Ángela Stella Matutina

angelastella@social.treehouse.systems

@valk

No. I expand acronyms too, that kind of thing.

2026-04-29 23:14:40

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@valkyrie_pilot That's a good question.

The rule (I understand it as one) says that text must always be transcribed 100% verbatim, i.e. absolutely identical to the original. However, this already collides with the rules that image descriptions must not contain all caps because they tend to irritate screen readers, and that acronyms must be handled in a way that screen readers can deal with in a sensible way.

I guess, and I can only guess, that misspellings should be corrected when transcribing text, especially in alt-text.

In earlier image descriptions, all of which are long descriptions in the post text, I've transcribed misspellings as well and even added a "(sic!)" after them to point out that it wasn't me who misspelled it. However, doing so amounts to pointing out the misspellings, as would correcting them in the transcript and then explaining which words are misspelled in which way, even though would conform more with the "always transcribe verbatim" rule. Also, I've since declared these descriptions obsolete.

Unfortunately, I can't find any online resources about alt-texts and image descriptions that even only take misspellings in to-be-transcribed text into consideration, much less define how to deal with them. It's just like text that's unreadable in the image, but that can be sourced elsewhere: It's commonly treated like it doesn't exist.

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