Fill in the ALT on an image

[DorienD]

Lets discuss which field we should use for this.

Title, Caption or a new field?

Title: not a big fan since then an image will always have a alt tag which might be annoying for people that use screenreaders

Caption: is the same as the figcaption, might aswell be annoying but its context aware so the alt tag is optional and can change from page to page

What do you think @loetie @elizabethprins

[loetie]

Why is caption annoying? @DorienD

I could easily imagine that the alt caption could change if the image is used on another page within another context?

[elizabethprins]

I think the caption should always be different from the alt. alt literally means 'alternative text', and is meant to provide a textual alternative for the image information.

Think of the image as information, in and of itself. It may be accompanied by a caption, which you could understand as additional information that would be meaningless without the initial information that is the image.

Consider this example:
Image: Man and dog playing in a sunny field with a ball thrower.
Caption: Best buds!

Without an alt text, to a blind person the caption is gibberish. But it would also be a little strange to a sighted person if the caption of the image were so descriptive.

So I would like to see the alt text have its own field, and indeed it must be deliberately entered by the editor (the Title field defaults to the filename and is therefore unusable).

I propose either the existing "Short title" field, or a new "Alt text" field.

[elizabethprins]

Also, for this reason I believe that the alt text should not be context aware. Because the image is supposedly also not context aware, and the alt information IS the image information.

[DorienD]

@mworrell Should we add this field alt field in zotonic on the media categories?

[mworrell]

Could you use the title of the media item?

[mworrell]

The title should be descriptive already.