Comment by gostsamo

Comment by gostsamo a day ago

26 replies

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Not the gp, but currently reading a web novel with a card game where the author didn't include alt text in the card images. I contacted them about it and they started, but in the meantime ai was a big help. all kinds of other images on the internet as well when they are significant to understanding the surrounding text. better search experience when Google, DDG, and the like make finding answers difficult. I might use smart glasses for better outdoor orientation, though a good solution might take some time. phone camera plus ai is also situationally useful.

dzhiurgis a day ago

As a (web app) developer I never quite sure what to put in alt. Figured you might have some advice here?

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  • shagie 21 hours ago

    I'm gonna flip this around... have you tried pasting the image (and the relevant paragraph of text) and asking ChatGPT (or another LLM) to generate the alt text for the image and see what it produces?

    For example... https://chatgpt.com/share/692f1578-2bcc-8011-ac8f-a57f2ab6a7...

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    • alwillis 18 hours ago

      > I'm gonna flip this around... have you tried pasting the image (and the relevant paragraph of text) and asking ChatGPT (or another LLM) to generate the alt text for the image and see what it produces?

      There's a great app by an indie developer that uses ML to identify objects in images. Totally scriptable via JavaScript, shell script and AppleScript. macOS only.

      Could be 10, 100 or 1,000 images [1].

      [1]: https://flyingmeat.com/retrobatch/

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  • gostsamo a day ago

    The question to ask is, what a sighted person learns after looking at the image? The answer is the alt text. E.g if the image is a floppy, maybe you communicate that this is the save button. If it shows a cat sleeping on the windowsill, the alt text is yep: "my cat looking cute while sleeping on the windowsill".

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    • michaelbuckbee a day ago

      I really like how you framed this as the takeaway or learning that needs to happen as what should be in the alt and not a recitation of the image. Where I've often had issues is more for things like business charts and illustrations and less cute cat photos.

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      • isoprophlex a day ago

        "A meaningless image of a chart, from which nevertheless emanates a feeling of stonks going up"

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      • travisjungroth a day ago

        It might be that you’re not perfectly clear on what exactly you’re trying to convey with the image and why it’s there.

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      • gostsamo a day ago

        The logic stays the same though the answer is longer and not always easy. Just saying "business chart" is totally useless. You can make a choice on what to focus and say "a chart of the stock for the last five years with constant improvement and a clear increase by 17 percent in 2022" (if it is a simple point that you are trying to make) or you can provide an html table with the datapoints if there is data that the user needs to explore on their own.

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  • askew a day ago

    One way to frame it is: "how would I describe this image to somebody sat next to me?"

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    • embedding-shape a day ago

      Important to add for blind people: "... assuming they never seen anything and visual metaphors won't work"

      The amount of times I've seem captions that wouldn't make sense for people who never been able to see is staggering, I don't think most people realize how visual our typical language usage is.

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