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.”
Good question… I’ve wondered about this myself. It appears that the filename is used to create a description for the image. Then after uploading, you can tweak it in the markdown. When viewing a post with an image, you can mouse over it or click on it to look at the image bigger, and it includes the description at bottom. But I don’t know how that description works in screen readers.
If this can work, then for communities where this is especially important you can develop a culture around improving these descriptions, and moderators can also keep an eye out and edit posts to improve descriptions or send PMs to educate users.
@codinghorror is there a place to make specific requests for technical improvements here? Requiring users to rename files or supply markup is simply a non-starter. Those techniques are completely non-discoverable, but even if they weren’t, are also a bigger hurdle than most users will climb. Adding alt text need to be obvious, simple, and (critically) part of the normal process for uploading images, so that users who rely on assistive technologies can participate. IMO the best solution would be to have a pop-up on image upload that asks for descriptive text to be supplied. And at least for our forum I would even like a configuration to make supplying non-empty text mandatory.
@codinghorror I meant to convey that accessibility needs to be a first-class concern that is built directly in to Discourse, not bolted on as an afterthought. (Apart from that, after a recent very bad experience with a non-official plugin and a botched upgrade, we only install official plugins).
Could you point me to a theme component that has these elements? I’d like to play around with one so that I can perhaps sketch out what an alt text / image description theme component workflow would be like.
I do think a plug-in like how events works would be best though, where you insert an image and a form opens up where you type in the alt text and the image description. Then when you hit submit the image is automatically properly formatted.
I suggest starting with a theme component here prior to considering any core changes.
Sorry for the delayed reply. I have always regarded Discourse development as both thoughtful and thorough, and my perception from other threads as also led me to believe that accessibility is a priority.
Which is why I am frankly struggling to understand the reluctance here. I would describe the current situation for users as “nearly impossible to add, even if they want to / remember to” and the situation for admins as “completely impossible to remind / encourage”. Making alt-tags simpler and easier seems like incredibly low-hanging fruit that would benefit accessibility on every Discourse instance. It should be built-in, everywhere. $0.02
You could certainly build a blocking interstitial which prevents posting… I think you could do this with watched words – since we know the default image description is equal to the filename?
Prompt for descriptions on image uploads (default ON)
Attempt to auto-fill image descriptions using AI service (default OFF)
I would not personally want automated AU labels submitted without human review.
All that said, after three years now, I am somewhat skeptical that Discourse is going to build in functionality to streamline accessibility options for image uploads.
We’re not an image-heavy forum, but I just had occasion to post an image, and I had to come to Meta to look up alt-text functionality to be certain of how it works. It’s not very obvious.
My awareness has been raised by an increasing emphasis on accessibility in general webdev today. I’d love to see Discourse prompt for alt-text on upload, and provide an option to make it mandatory.
Slightly related, Discourse AI now prompts users once when detecting alt-text less images in their posts to enable AI-generated automatic image captions.
That’s something, but I’d still like to see a prompt for authors on non-AI-enabled forums.
(Not to pick on Discourse AI, but so far I’m not a fan of AI alt text in general, as I’ve seen it provide really banal and/or inaccurate content that ignores context. AI may have a place in things like bulk operations on large back-catalogs. But in an article or a conversation, I’d rather have the author compose alt text that expresses the narrative point of the image, not just a visual description.)
