The internet has become 3 massive multi-user blogs, each largely consisting of screenshots taken of the other two. This kind of blows, and not just for the usual reasons that may spring to mind.
Images are a terrible medium for online communication! Not everyone online uses a monitor. Any messages contained in a picture is straight up unacceptable without alt-text. It also makes it harder to find and fact check sources, or to spread a thought or idea further than yet another image upload. Copy/pasting text is just plain easier than downloading and uploading.
If you're going through the trouble of creating an image post, take an extra minuite to copy/past (or even transcribe) the source text into the alt-text submission. It's not much, but it goes a ways to improving how we use this blasted network!
https://uxdesign.cc/how-to-write-an-image-description-2f30d3bf5546
If we're stickying this thread why don't we just make it a mandatory field in submissions? Just remove the optional, maybe change "optional" to a link to a help thread showing best practices for image description in this field.
Also this actually seems like a real world use-case for AI, an app that uses AI to create descriptions for images for those with sight disabilities as and when required. The kind of genuinely positive use-case the technology ought to be implemented for. (disclaimer, i have not checked whether any of the AIs are actually good at this)
Making the change to mandatory would be a feature request for the toggle box and require coding. I'm happy to help anyone interested get in contact with the lemmy development team if this is something they are interested in.
Could a link to this guide be put next to the alt text box without too much extra work? Seems like the general sentiment is that people want to use the optional feature, but don't feel like they know how.
https://uxdesign.cc/how-to-write-an-image-description-2f30d3bf5546
I think in that case it would still be some custom coding on the hexbear-ui end or submitting the code to upstream lemmy.
If it's mandatory then it'll get filled with low effort junk much of the time.
Better than no alt text, no?
Why would that be?