A proposed scheme for parsing preformatted alt text

[easeout at tilde.team]

On Thu, Sep 10, 2020 at 07:29:53PM -0700, Nathan Galt wrote:
> 
> > On Sep 10, 2020, at 5:16 PM, easeout at tilde.team wrote:
> > 
> > I think it should behave like the "title" attribute. I want Gemini to
> > offer accessibility affordances where the nature of plain text does not
> > already provide them, and this seems like the right use for that. I
> > think it would also be suitable to change the name from "alt text" to
> > something like "accessibile description”.
> 
> I think you’ve got the terminology backwards. In HTML, `alt` is for people who can’t see the image (didn’t download it, eyes don’t work right, etc.). In that light, renaming it to “accessible description” changes nothing, and “it should behave like the ’title’ attribute” means, as far as I can tell, “it should be accessory information for people who can already see the image”, which is not even _trying_ to be helpful for people who can’t see the image.
>
> Let me show an example where the contents of `alt` and `title` differ wildly:
> 
> <img src='conned-eventually.jpeg' alt='Chio telling Link “Ya know, if you keep doing everything everyone asks of you without question, you’re gonna get conned eventually…”' title='Little does Chio know I’ve already met Purah.'>
> 
> The alt text describes the image (a screenshot of me playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild).
> 
> The title text is a joke, hidden behind a tooltip in most browsers, that should make anyone who’s played BotW snicker briefly. (Purah treats Link as an errand-boy for a good portion of the game.)
> 

You're right, I did have the concepts reversed. Thanks for spelling it
out so clearly!