RE: Alt text for images with callouts

[Syed Zaeem Hosain <Syed -dot- Hosain -at- aeris -dot- net>]

Char James-Tanny wrote:
> Back in the "old" days ;-), when our 200 baud dial-up modems meant that images took a long time to show up, people would disable images in their browsers to save time. Alt text let us see a description of what we were missing (and then we could decide if we wanted to wait while the image was downloaded).

> When you hover over an image and text appears (at least in Edge and Chrome), that content is coming from the image's title text.

> Alt text will never provide a detailed explanation because there aren't enough characters (and "long description" was never fully adopted...it was listed as "obsolete" when HTML5 was first released but later became a recommended extension).

> If the content in the image is important, the surrounding text should explain why. Decorative images, which only need a blank alt (""), means that the image doesn't provide any important content and can be skipped.

> For more information, see WebAIM: Alternative Text<https://webaim.org/techniques/alttext/>, which covers "alternate text" (the concept) and "alt text" (the attribute).

Peter Neilson wrote:
> No, that is not correct. Instead the alt text is displayed in some manner provided by the particular browser in use.

Ah! I had completely forgotten that alt text was really used for this purpose â it has been a long time since images have not loaded right up on my browser, I guess. :)

Thanks for the reminder!

Z
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