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All of these plus * It's an image of text in a language I don't speak; if there's alt-text I can copy and paste into Google Translate to get the gist.

Don't forget amusing alt text chuckles.

GIFs here have autogenerated alt text and it’s almost always terrible

gifs have that and it usually fuckifn sucks tbh and as someone who is functionally hard of hearing, similar technology has been in use for captioning much longer than for alt text, and that usually sucks even worse

not if it's generated by feeding images through some AI sausage machine, thanks very much

Also, sometimes people include jokes/easter eggs in there. (In addition to the necessary descriptions, one would hope)

also, it means that if you see an image with text in a language you don't speak or are not proficient enough in, you can also run that through an online translator and get the gist hell, I usually skeet English memes for a Spanish audience and I use alt-text so's people can get it in Spanish

- you can make funny asides in the alt text about the picture that don't make sense in the context of the post

all of this, plus face blindness

And if your alt text is just a dump of the text from the image, you're doing it wrong!

And sometimes the alt text is very, very funny. People are clever.

-Bsky uses rather severe compression, which can make small text on large images difficult or even impossible to read for some, so just having it in the alt text saves others some trouble.

AND it allows you to post a whole lot more characters!

Sometimes my brain just doesn't make sense of the image until I read what it's supposed to be, then it just clicks.

kinda ties into the last point but also additional witty commentary

It’s also great way around the character limit when I have more to say!

you don’t know how much you miss alt-text until you load the old bird app to see what’s going on and whoo-boy

Writing the alt text for pictures has helped me be a better writer. I rarely have to write a brief description of images in my day job. Hopefully I’ll get better at it!

I use it for the usual reasons plus because it gives me a whole bunch more characters to flesh out my thought(s)!

Also: - gives context that I might not otherwise have so I can fully appreciate the situation (e.g. the caption is "Oh nooo" and some plant I don't recognize. Alt text tells me it's a tomato plant but the tomatoes are gone) - people searching for words used in your alt text will find your image!

People like @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social use it to add value to the pictures

It's the perfect place to post extra info too long-winded to fit in your skeet, or to give the punchline/explanatory hint of a joke if you've left it as an exercise for the reader, or just to spout crap that you find amusing but doubt anyone else will.

I don't know who any of those people are, including hypothetical pictures of myself: I have prosopagnosia. #faceblind I can tell whether the typical number of face components are present in roughly the typical proportion and position. Please alt text who the depicted people are.

Thanks for saying this, Ian. I as well, for all of these.

5. Means you can search for a picture you posted previously.

I try to put it with all my posts when I can! Sometimes I'll forget but it's not that hard to do! And it's just helpful for everyone anyway 😄

Having spent many years as a maintenance programmer, THIS. Brief aside: that also goes for variable names. My favourite, widely used at my first job and propagated by me whenever I had the chance, was the #Dealing_With_An_Idiot flag.

It wasn't until someone in the comments days later used names (none of the images had alt text) that I realized it wasn't a bit and they were all different guys I'd never heard of

i have photosensitive hemiplegic chronic migraines and trying to read text too small in the wrong color on the wrong background can literally partially paralyze me 🫪

Shows up in keyword searches and excludes muted words. Be kind, keep the people who sometimes get fed up and just want a break from the usual attention vampires and decided to mute their names in mind

The Alt Text box is 3000 characters, I've often thought about doing long form posts in the alt text of a blank picture

Similarly to the second one: ‘I have no idea which specific aspect of that image you think is “literally me fr.”’

Your screengrab is too wide|small|low-contrast to read.

- Dog names - Stupid jokes that don’t fit the post but enhance it by being part of the image text - What I’m eating or drinking

Might I add it’s indexed for search!! I find my own posts searching for something I think I put in the alt text

Also, I enjoy when my partner reads them out loud while I work on my nonsense

Also fertile ground for comedy.

I like how I understand this without context. Still wonder what was up with that deletion.

Sometimes people post a joke or comic that I don't get until I read the alt text because I'm missing context or I'm viewing things different than others. At this point, I presume people who make long running comics and don't alt text are purposefully being assholes.

Adding alt text is also beneficial for the poster if you want engagement, because more people will see/understand/reshare it, and it the alt text is also a part of search results, so it's easier to find.

100% this.

Er, characters, not words. #BlueskyNeedsEdit!

The person asked why people with vision would need to use alt text

I mean, he does, I feel you might need to look into contacts if you can’t see that.

A solution? altbot.marcomaroni.it?lang=en

Alt text is also a great place to add fun details and create a picture using words! I never post without adding alt text cause it takes maybe a few minutes and is such a nice, useful, sometimes necessary thing for so many people!

Too lazy to look at the picture (another reason)

Makes the images searchable too

"Who the fuck is that?" is my typical reason.

A timely reminder that in bluesky, you can enable a setting to force you to provide alt text before it'll let you post that snazzy image you want to share with the world

i don't understand arguing against accessibility. more accessibility is a good thing for everything.

- The meme image I'm reposting has some weird hard to read palette like white-on-pink and similar bs. Sure I can read it but it still strains my eyes

Sometimes I like to use the Alt text on my pictures to make small jokes or point out details.

People seem to forget that besides screen readers the other main purpose of the alt text has always been to act as a fallback when images fail to load (or were disabled to save bandwidth on a metered connection).

On this site sometimes it’s not even a celebrity but rather some politician’s sister and I’m supposed to know so much ball that I get the joke immediately. Alt text allows me to pretend to know what’s going on.

notes app in order to read it now, but at least I have that option. I could also use the color inversion option in my phone, but that has other downsides if I don't do it at the right time.

yessss I love giving extra little bonus thoughts as I describe my art. some people get so funny with it too.

"My vision sucks and that text is too small to read otherwise" Oh, yes, hello, this is me.

Also if you're a giant dork like I am I like to caption animal photos IDing the species for educational purposes. For example: bsky.app/profile/tran...

You are very kind

2nd & last one, takes it from oft reposted photo from TV show to actually understanding the meme

Also an opportunity for additional commentary, sarcasm, link addresses, etc.

Also, savvy users tend to hide really good jokes in the alt

- I often don't get the visual joke

I do wish more people on my Tumblr feed would tag their fandom posts clearly. I wanna know what that anime or manga is so I can check it out, but the tag is just "reblog" or some incomprehensible abbreviation only known among the established fandom (especially bad when it's a Chinese show).

Recently posted a bunch of art I'd commissioned in a single post. Whip I credited the artists in the post, the alt text helped confirm which artist had credit for which piece.

That's its original purpose. It's an "alternative" to the image.

handy image

Add to that: if you're not a native speaker of that language, it's easier to translate via machine translation if the text is in alt-text.

The “I’m over 40, I have no idea who that celebrity is” YEA 😩🤣

Yeah I can’t read fuckall of the text screenshots people post

Context is the main one for me. Also I like how it comes up in searches (and apparently gets added to filters too)

Often people post an image of an entire A4 document with ten point text. Even with rotating my phone and zooming the image it's a struggle to read

Alt text is super useful for our of context images! I wanna get the joke, please explain the joke to me

I like writing alt text because you get a much bigger word count.

Plus: a lot of the people who use it are funny AF.

all of this plus If it didn't help me as a sighted person at all (it does) it would be the right thing to do

"I don't get that reference," is a key reason for me using it.

Another reason - I use dark mode and the ALT text shows up as dark even when the image isn't. It's 10x easier for me to read white text on black than the reverse. The text is often a bit larger too, in a consistent font, which makes it easier to read on a phone.

Its option two

Heh, good point, well made.

I didn't, but I wish I did. It's just a little box telling you what alt text accomplishes. It doesn't call you an ableist monster for failing to use it. Maybe it should?

I dunno. I need the scolding, wherever it comes from.

The pseudo-opinion expressed by your programming isn't really part of the conversation here.

Same with people who post nature photos. Often they'll not say what the organisms are in their post, but they will in the alt text, so this can be really helpful if you didn't know what they were.

In which case the alt text cues someone else to name them for you

Also, cosplay and fan art of anime characters I never saw in my life.

I was going to make a joke about the joys of getting old, then realized 99% of the time I do not regret not recognizing "popular" people at all, then realized I understand my parents a little better. Real whopper of a moment, that one

So very glad it’s not just me.

Also makes it searchable, very handy

Your reason #4 (my vision sucks...) is especially important for anyone over 50. I remember looking askance at my husband when he told me old people (all of em Katie) can't read small print. But here I am, old & unable to read small print. At. All. I NEED alt text, especially on my phone.

This person has only 8 posts, they are all argumentative replies, and the oldest is this one at 15 hours old. It is obviously a bot.

I'm a web dev who actually cares about ARIA so I do my best with alt text but I wish there were stronger guidlines. Some screen readers can handle text inside an image and some can't. Knowing who a celebrity is subjective but that ties into context, maybe knowing the celeb is important.

My personal favourite use of alt text is adding context to things that me or other people would have zero idea about otherwise.

And because Tom Cox @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social

It has been great for providing context for various things without using up the limited character count.

I’m under 40 and I also have no idea who that celebrity is.

Can we make “I have no idea who that celebrity is” a browser setting?

I make mine poetic