Allow for true alt text to be specified in markdown [kbin-core repo]

Kraiden, 7 months ago

Hi, I've tried to clarify on the ticket, but I'll post it here as well. Please note this is specifically for Kbin, not Lemmy.

what they are trying to post

This is applicable to anywhere markdown text is supported. Mostly thread text, and comments.

is a URL to an image or an uploaded image

I've only tried externally hosted images (URL)

markdown by hand

Yes, this is specifically about supporting hand written markdown. There are two variants:

A) ![alt text here](url)
B) ![alt text here](url "label")

This ticket is both a bug report:
neither variant actually populates the `alt` text html attribute

And a feature request:
Support variant B) above in some way to allow more meaningful alt text

Example rendered currently:
A) ![alt text here](url)

<span ...>
  <button ...><i ...></i></button>
  <a href="url" ...>alt text here</a>
</span>
<div ...>
  <div class="preview">
    <img src="url"> 
  </div>
</div>

This format should at least populate the alt attribute

B) ![alt text here](url "label")

Currently renders exactly the same as A) with the "label" being completely stripped out.

There are two possibilities for this format:

Either 1)

...
  <a href="url" ...>label</a>
...
  <img src="url" alt="alt text here"> 

Or 2)

...
  <a href="url" ...>alt text here</a>
...
  <img src="url" alt="label"> 

1. is more technically correct, but 2) is closer to existing functionality

MostlyBlindGamer, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

I can only do math while on the clock and I’ve realized that also stands for complicated bug reports/feature requests/whatever this is exactly. Meaning I’m likely to miss something, but I’ll take a haphazard crack at it.

Anyway, my understanding of Markdown is that the content between square brackets is the alternative text and that captions aren’t explicitly universally supported. See Markdown Guide.

Lemmy-UI renders alt text from the content between square brackets, which is just perfect. Reddit, for what it’s worth, renders that - where it is supported - into alt text and a caption. That does lead to terrible alt text, where people (Reddit admins, specifically) only see the caption and forget where else that text is going. So yeah, having a separate caption sounds like a great idea.

That being said, you (or OOP?) may enjoy getting into the weeds of accessible name calculation. Will a screen reader read alt or title? Both? In which order? (VoiceOver on macOS read alt and then title. Who knew!?)

Now, I can’t imagine interface icons missing alt text will have anything at all to do with Markdown rendering. In fact, it’s possible they don’t need alt text at all, if the functionality is already accessible some other way, like through an adjacent text link. You can’t just leave out the alt attribute, you should hide the node, but I haven’t looked into kbin’s interface to find out if that’s the case. In fact, I haven’t looked into how kbin renders Markdown for images.

So… does any of that help? Does it help formulate specific questions, perhaps? Who should I address the bill to? Hehe.

Kraiden, 7 months ago

Lol, honestly I'm already deeper down this rabbit hole than I ever thought I'd be.

So far as I can tell, Kbin doesn't provide a way to specify alt text on embedded images at all. You can attach an image to the post using the GUI, and specify alt text that way, but it will always be at the end of the post, and you can only have 1. Not ideal.

Re: Syntax support. There's no official spec for markdown, but there is a canonical syntax guide which describes the format I'm suggesting. You're correct that it's not very widely supported in implementation though.

I think I created confusion on that ticket by talking about the codeberg.org implementation, which does support the suggested syntax, by populating the title attribute. I wasn't necessarily suggesting it as a solution, and it sounds like that's not a great implementation anyway.

I created even more confusion by talking about a plugin that sighted devs or testers could use to see alt text, and gave a few examples of elements to look at. None of that is really relevant.

I did try to clarify as a comment on the parent post here if you're interested.

MostlyBlindGamer, 7 months ago

Right, text between brackets should really go into the ‘alt’ attribute. If we boil this down to that, it’s a good clear place to start.