Can everyone access alt-text?

This may come as a surprise for you, but: Not everyone can access alt-text.

Alt-text cannot be accessed by keyboard

Depending on what kind of frontend someone uses, i.e. if they use the Web frontend of whatever Fediverse server software they use, or if they use a third-party Web frontend, or if they use a dedicated desktop or mobile app, there are generally three ways of accessing alt-text:

• Either you hover a mouse cursor over the image if you have a pointing device.
• Or you tap and hold your finger on the image if all you have is a touch screen.
• Or there is a dedicated button on the image which you can click. Mastodon 4.4.0 introduced such a button.

All three have something in common: They require either a pointing device (mouse, trackball, touchpad, trackpoint or something like that) to move a mouse cursor around or a touch screen.

Alternatively, you can have a screen reader read out alt-text for you, along with everything around the alt-text. But sighted people normally don't have any screen readers.

So if you operate your computer only through a keyboard and without a screen reader, you cannot access alt-text.

Now you may wonder: Who does that? Who is so backward as to only use a keyboard? We've had computer mice for, like, four decades or so!

I'll tell you.

Physical disabilities

Operating a mouse requires at least one working hand. So does operating a trackball or a touchpad or a trackpoint. So does operating a touch screen.

But not everyone has two working hands.

There are quadriplegic people who cannot use their limbs anymore. There are people whose both hands had to be amputated. There are people who were born with no hands.

These people can operate computers, but they can only do so with a keyboard. They can poke the keys of the keyboard with a so-called headpointer, a kind of stick strapped to their forehead. Or they pick up a sort of pen with their mouth and push the keys with it. But they can't use either to push a mouse around.

Other people have such a severe tremor that they can't operate pointing devices calmly and precisely enough to access alt-text. In this thread, I had a discussion with a user named Deborah a.k.a. gnomicutterance@hachyderm.io who actually doesn't have two working hands, and who told me that she can't access alt-text because of that.

Money quote no. 1:¹

@jupiter_rowland “Done right also means accessibility for people who might not know much about your image's subject matter either.” The person who posted this is simply flat out incorrect. Alt text is INACCESSIBLE to many disabled people. If the extra text is important, it needs to be in visible text.

Money quote no. 2:¹

@jupiter_rowland

I have a disability that prevents me from seeing alt text, because on almost all platforms, seeing the alt requires having a screenreader or working hands. If you post a picture, is there info that you want somebody who CAN see the picture but DOESN’T have working hands to know? Write that in visible text. If you put that in the alt, you are explicitly excluding people like me.

Verdict: Sighted people without working hands cannot access alt-text.

(Now you may claim that all these people should go and try harder, just so you can justify adding explanations to your alt-text or expanding your puny 500-character limit by putting parts of your post into the alt-text. Let me tell you that that's every bit as ableist towards these physically disabled people as intentionally not providing any image description is ableist towards blind and visually-impaired people.)

Choice of environment and frontend

Other people cannot access alt-text because they have decided for themselves to use their computers through a very minimalist user interface and only with a keyboard. The most famous example is i3wm, a super-minimalist, super-asketic, super-lightweight tiling window manager which many die-hard Linux or BSD users prefer over desktop environments such as Plasma, GNOME or Xfce. i3wm, however, does not support pointing devices. It can only be operated via keyboard. And instead of fumbling around with menus and icons, they operate their entire system only on the command line.

You may think this is backward and inefficient. But these people can often touch-type without even looking at the keyboard. With i3wm and only a keyboard, they are much much faster than you could ever be with a keyboard and a pointing device on Windows or on a Mac. With vi or vim and only a keyboard, they are much much faster than you could ever be with Microsoft Word, a keyboard and a mouse.

However, if they can't use a mouse anywhere in their computer environment (again, because they chose that), this also means they can't use a mouse in their Web browser which is often the only graphical application they use. Some of them even install add-ons in their browsers that give them keybindings in their browsers much like those in vim.

Still, if they can't use a mouse in their browser, they have no way to access alt-text.

Verdict: Not everyone uses an environment that lets them access alt-text.

_(And again, you can't tell them to get themselves a mouse and install Windows or at least a real desktop environment with mouse support so that you can keep putting stuff into alt-text that isn't available anywhere else in the post.

Also, if you use the excuse that all these people are minorities: So are blind and visually-impaired people. Your excuses are still blatantly ableist.)_

Conclusion

There are people who cannot access alt-text. There is no denying that, there is no challenging that. No, sorry, there isn't.

For you, this means: Don't explain things or give other information only in alt-text!

And: Don't use alt-text to write around your character limit!