Editing image alternative (alt) text

[nat (Natalie T)]

To better support our friends on screen readers, and help with indexing on search engines, we’ve introduced the ability to edit your image’s alt text in the preview. We hope this feature can make it easier to update our image descriptions!

To enter a description you can press the pencil icon at the bottom of an image and enter a description. This saves time cause you no longer need to edit the markdown directly.

Related topic:

What’s the best way to add image descriptions?

We have a practice of always adding image descriptions in order to make Discourse accessible to people who use screen readers. What are some best ways to support adding image descriptions? For example, is it possible for help text to show up that tells people to add an image description? “You’ve added an image! Please add an image description before you create the topic.” And, how do we add alt-text? More on image descriptions

[Decorbuz]

I have two questions.

1. Is this any different from manually removing the alt text manually?
2. Is it possibly to completely remove the alt text through edit box in the preview? Will it just spit out an error?

Otherwise, this will be very convenient for me.

[nat (Natalie T)]

@Decorbuz

Is this any different from manually removing the alt text manually?

I assume you mean removing the alt text from the composer: no, there is no difference. Some users get intimidated by modifying the markdown directly, especially when filenames may become cryptic, so this is a good alternative.

@Decorbuz

Is it possibly to completely remove the alt text through edit box in the preview? Will it just spit out an error?

We’ve not added any validation to ensure alt texts are always present. So no errors yet

[Decorbuz]

@nat

I assume you mean removing the alt text from the composer: no, there is no difference. Some users get intimidated by modifying the markdown directly, especially when filenames may become cryptic, so this is a good alternative.

Okay, thank you for clarifying.

[debryc (Deborah Chang)]

I just tried it! Worked great! Thank you.

I continue to advocate for a pop-up option (like the add link interface) that appears whenever someone adds an image (can be a setting that’s turned on or off). Hoping that’s in the plans