“The Literary Style of Alt-Text”
For years, I didn’t add alt-text to my online images
But I’ve started doing it all the time now — being on Mastodon is what showed me how important it is!
Along the way, I’ve started noticing …
…. what an oddly literary activity it is
Here’s an image I wrote alt-text for when I blogged a few weeks ago, below
My essay on alt-texting: https://clivethompson.medium.com/the-literary-style-of-alt-text-9f1595cd8f0c
A free “friend” link in case you don’t subscribe to Medium: https://clivethompson.medium.com/the-literary-style-of-alt-text-9f1595cd8f0c?sk=1d9cd685997cb08d8909da687a2d03cf
A screenshot of a story written by the author, describing how he wrote alt-text for the attached photo. I reads: And at first I just wrote a simple description, something like "a cyclist going down the street." Then I added more details, including that the cyclist is in the center of the picture, and behind them are a bus stop and a brightly lit store, and that the cyclist is moving quickly. But as I was writing that last clause - "the cyclist is moving quickly" - I realized something curious about the composition of the photo: The cyclist is crisp, while the background is blurred. That's not an easy effect for the photographer to achieve! And it' precisely what gives the image its power. So I wound up writing the alt-text thusly ... “A cyclist going rapidly down a city street. The photo is taken from the side, and the cyclist is in the center of the image, heading towards our right. In behind the cyclist we see a bus stop and a brightly lit store. Interestingly, despite the fact that the cyclist is moving quickly, they are unblurred and crisp in the photo - while the background is blurred. The ultimate effect is curious: It's as if the store were moving quickly, while the cyclist was standing still” One could critique this alt-text for being too damn long. Fair enough! And there's something a bit narcissistic about me focusing on the internal experience I have while puzzling over how best to describe this image.
