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In a couple of different places on Mastodon this week I’ve seen people saying something to the effect of “what does visible alt text matter, it’s for screen readers.”

Here are just a few scenarios why people might want to view alt text visually:

1. “I made the post and I want to double check the alt text I wrote.”
2. “I did not make the post but I want to learn how other people write alt text so I can write better descriptions.”
3. “I’m having trouble making sense of the image but I think a written description would help.”
4. “My vision is enough to read text at my preferred font size but not in a tiny screenshot with jpeg compression.”
5. “This is what works best for me because of reasons I don’t want to get into.”

Accessibility is for everyone. Try not to make assumptions.
I'm on friendica and I still haven't quite figured out alt text. I want to sometime soon, but what I thought it was, either wasn't or I couldn't verify. I do use descriptions as part of my post though, so the post goes like:
Text
Pucture
Description of picture

I just have to hope it's better than nothing until I figure out the alt text stuff
@Becky Friendica does it like this: [img=https://url.to/your-image]image description goes here[/img]
Thanks!! I might experiment and try to see if it works if I get the chance tonight. I'm constantly impressed at how friendica folk are ready to help other friendica pals with the knowledge of the things 🥰
I've found the alt text particularly useful for times when people are posting pictures of text in languages I don't know (which is basically all of them). Having the alt text of the text in the photo makes it much easier (at least for me personally) to translate that text.
I’ve gotten so many good replies to this post with examples of how people find visible alt tags useful. I can’t boost them all, but it’s worth checking out the thread. Accessibility really is for everyone.

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