The discussion revolves around automatically adding relevant alt text to images uploaded in Discourse posts, primarily for accessibility rather than SEO. leopedrini initiated the thread, noting that default alt text (‘image’) lacks context and suggested auto-generating alt text based on topic/post info. Jagster downplayed SEO relevance, emphasizing that filename and context matter more. Ed_S and sam highlighted accessibility as the core issue — blind users rely on meaningful alt text, and AI (like CLIP) can help, though imperfectly. sam proposed a theme component to force users to add alt text. Falco confirmed AI-generated alt text is on the backlog. Jagster cautioned against overusing alt text, noting many images are decorative and shouldn’t have it. mustachianpost asked if the feature would be core or plugin-based and its timeline; leopedrini illustrated the problem with a screenshot showing missing alt text. Lhc_fl warned users might lazily enter useless alt text (e.g., ‘1’, ‘aaa’). 45thj5ej checked in 13 months later, noting missing alt text on blog landing pages. Falco replied that the feature shipped via the Discourse AI plugin months prior, linking to the announcement.
Nope. Alt is kind of more important to give users a bit better chances when searching images, but filename is the important one, but the most important thing is to use right context, ”this an apple: <image of apple named apple.jpg, alt is apple>.
Alt text is very useful for those using screenreaders - including people who are blind or partially sighted. But ideally it is text which describes what is being shown. It’s an accessibility issue. (I can’t think of a simple way to do that annotation - one of the image-oriented software services might do it.)
Yes, this has popped up before. To me the accessibility argument is far more important than the SEO one.
When you dump an image in a post and give it no description, blind people reading the forum are at a great disadvantage. They lose extremely important context.
AI can help bit here and provide automatic titles. I would say it performs okish, but has plenty of gaps.
As an opening move I recommend creating a theme component .
force users to provide titles on images
When enabled and you post anything and forget to enter a title for your images we could prompt you with a intermediary bootbox that reminds you to add titles to your images.
Of course it is. Well, more or less the argument is anything else than SEO.
I have two blind friends. Both are saying same all the time: the issue is not alt itself, but lack of quality alt-text, plus using alt everywhere all the time on images without any content — and here I see really big issues when webmasters get AI that starts generate alt-texts.
And… the main issue for screen readers is bad design of platform, and there the team has done quite good job.
Interesting.
Without coding anything, is there a native way where I can check a box to make image alt text mandatory across my entire Discourse instance?
Hopefully not, because that is something you don’t want to do. You would like to see ALT when an image is important part of content. Mostly images are just… visual noise and then no one should use ALT.
Most people are lazy. Unless you pay the moderator to help perform such an operation, most users are too lazy to type helpful alt. There is a high probability that you will get a bunch of images whose alt is 1, aaa, xxx, image1, etc.
13 months later, how’s this coming along? Was wondering if I could add alt text to any images I upload in a post. I use the Landing Pages plugin with the Blog landing page and it seems alt text isn’t being given to the images being grabbed for the blog landing page? (https://forums.gonomad.me/home) - Or at least that’s what Lighthouse and performance sites are telling me.
and then no one should use ALT.