From e013420d56d15947defc3392fbeda00b42087b9d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Seirdy Date: Fri, 6 Dec 2024 23:08:51 -0500 Subject: [PATCH] Relax advice on alt-text character count --- content/posts/website-best-practices.gmi | 2 +- content/posts/website-best-practices.md | 2 +- 2 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/content/posts/website-best-practices.gmi b/content/posts/website-best-practices.gmi index 498d997..17a2b8e 100644 --- a/content/posts/website-best-practices.gmi +++ b/content/posts/website-best-practices.gmi @@ -558,7 +558,7 @@ Expect some readers to have images disabled or unloaded. Examples include: Accordingly, follow good practices for alt-text: * Concisely summarize the image content the best you can, without repeating the surrounding content. -* Images should usually have alt-text under 100 characters, excluding punctuation. Save longer descriptions for a caption or "aria-describedby". Exceptions exist; this is just a weak norm. +* Images should usually have alt-text under 100 characters, excluding punctuation. Save longer descriptions for a caption or "aria-describedby". Exceptions exist; this is just a weak norm. If longer descriptions elsewhere aren't an option, disregard this advice and make alt-text as long as it needs to be. * Don't include significant information that isn't present in the image; I'll cover how to handle supplementary information in the next subsections. The W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) offers a decision tree for writing alt-text. It's a little lacking in nuance, but makes for a good starting point: diff --git a/content/posts/website-best-practices.md b/content/posts/website-best-practices.md index 398f41b..c7d2e8f 100644 --- a/content/posts/website-best-practices.md +++ b/content/posts/website-best-practices.md @@ -596,7 +596,7 @@ Accordingly, follow good practices for alt-text: * Concisely summarize the image content the best you can, without repeating the surrounding content. -* Images should usually have alt-text under 100 ch.[^21] Save longer descriptions for a caption or aria-describedby. Exceptions exist; this is just a weak norm. +* Images should usually have alt-text under 100 ch.[^21] Save longer descriptions for a caption or aria-describedby. Exceptions exist; this is just a weak norm. If longer descriptions elsewhere aren't an option, disregard this advice and make alt-text as long as it needs to be. * Don't include significant information that isn't present in the image; I'll cover how to handle supplementary information in the next subsections.