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I recently saw several mentions of image alt text including a poll about alt text on social media. The question was something like "Would you ever post an image

I recently saw several mentions of image alt text including a poll about alt text on social media. The question was something like "Would you ever post an image without alt text" and something like 99% of responses were "never". I mean, I've literally never even thought about it so it surprised me that such a high number of respondents would have chosen that. Which I guess is kind of the point. There is an idea that ignorance is bad, but once you have been informed then non-compliance is treated as intentionally malicious. That is, if you know why you ought to add an alt-text and yet you refuse to do so then you are deemed to be complicit in the oppression of those who require alt text to enjoy the Internet. It is a subtle reframing from "being polite and courteous is good" to "non-compliance is evil". It also reminds me of a lot of behavior I see in tech spaces. One that comes to mind is the notorious dog-piling on the maintainer of Actix-web framework by well-meaning Rust evangelists who were upset by his use of unsafe language features. Another I recall is when a company had a mix of open source libraries (MIT license) and some other kind of business license in the same repo. They were being harassed for mentioning the product was open source in their marketing. What is interesting to me is that some people will see some of these examples as justifiable harassment while they will see others as crossing a line. It is just a sad fact that the mechanism to get people to adhere to social norms is often through bullying and shame.

lukeschlather 3y ago
Style guides exist for good reason. Also a simple suggestion that people adhere to the style guide is often heard as harassment even when it's simply asking people to adhere to the style guide. Also, if 99% say "never" and that sounds too high, what about "Would you ever send an image without alt text to a blind person?" Does it make sense to post a message when you know a significant number of people are physically incapable of interpreting it?
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  It reminds me of religious zealots. The law (or server rules) doesn’t reflect what they want it to be, so they’ll take matters into their own hands. Of course there is a bit of every variety. There’s certainly polite people asking nicely and sensitive people seeing it as harassment. And there’s certainly people who see something they don’t agree with and just move along.
- tekla 3y ago
  I think about it as much as I think about the image not being intelligible to people who dont read English, not at all. Why dont you post everything in the top 10 most used languages if you want to be nice?

lukeschlather 3y ago

Style guides exist for good reason. Also a simple suggestion that people adhere to the style guide is often heard as harassment even when it's simply asking people to adhere to the style guide. Also, if 99% say "never" and that sounds too high, what about "Would you ever send an image without alt text to a blind person?" Does it make sense to post a message when you know a significant number of people are physically incapable of interpreting it?

Waterluvian 3y ago
It reminds me of religious zealots. The law (or server rules) doesn’t reflect what they want it to be, so they’ll take matters into their own hands. Of course there is a bit of every variety. There’s certainly polite people asking nicely and sensitive people seeing it as harassment. And there’s certainly people who see something they don’t agree with and just move along.
tekla 3y ago
I think about it as much as I think about the image not being intelligible to people who dont read English, not at all. Why dont you post everything in the top 10 most used languages if you want to be nice?