In a couple of different places on Mastodon this week I’ve seen people saying something to the effect of “what does visible alt text matter, it’s for screen readers.”
Here are just a few scenarios why people might want to view alt text visually:
1. “I made the post and I want to double check the alt text I wrote.”
2. “I did not make the post but I want to learn how other people write alt text so I can write better descriptions.”
3. “I’m having trouble making sense of the image but I think a written description would help.”
4. “My vision is enough to read text at my preferred font size but not in a tiny screenshot with jpeg compression.”
5. “This is what works best for me because of reasons I don’t want to get into.”
Accessibility is for everyone. Try not to make assumptions.
@arjache Also, I browse the fediverse in the terminal on low power computers a lot and seeing the alt text lets me know whether its worth trying to load it.
@kelbot
I've been using tut a lot recently, I really like it even when using a graphics-capable machine. And I can't agree more! Sometimes seeing a link to png or jpeg isn't incentive enough to open the image viewer. Alt texts help a lot. Of course you can put the description in the post text and I think that's the least most should do, but alt text is more appropriate for that.
@arjache
@m0xee @kelbot @arjache Same here! So nice to find tut users. :)