I am frequently on Piefed (Lemmy) and occasionally on Mastodon and I noticed they use ALT tags for images way more on Mastodon than we do here.

Anyone know why this is? it is more about the software or the culture or maybe just historical?

It seems like a good idea to always set the ALT tag for an image post on both services, and I’ve seen many ppl on the other site say they won’t boost (share) any image posts without ALT tags (since vision-impaired people really benefit from them).

Just curious…

  • CombatWombat@feddit.onlineEnglish
    2·
    2 days ago

    I do think the design could be better, but I’m not sure the mastodon design is so much better as to explain the difference between the two:

    image

    • Rimu@piefed.socialEnglish
      5·
      2 days ago

      There it is - Mastodon goes out of it’s way to warn the user that they haven’t provided alt text whereas Lemmy says (optional)

      • CombatWombat@feddit.onlineEnglish
        3·
        2 days ago

        Well, as long as I have the piefed dev on the line, I’ll request the number one masto feature I think would move the needle on alt text in the threadiverse: there’s a user preference you can enable called “Warn me before posting media without alt text” that pops this modal when enabled

        image

        • Rimu@piefed.socialEnglish
          4·
          2 days ago

          Yeah, could do. PieFed already does fairly ok at this, explaining the rationale for providing alt text:

          image

          All the mobile apps I checked do something similar, with no extra nudging, just an empty text field. Generally the mobile app devs are keen on new ideas like this, maybe do a post in the Voyager or Blorp community and see where that goes.