The contorted excuses people concoct to excuse not adding #altText boggle my mind.

Case in point: even if alt text is "now primarily used to train AI" [citation desperately needed], as I've just seen claimed, there are still real-world humans who benefit from it, just as there have been since the web emerged.

If AI tech is now being trained on alt text, it's also now being trained on all the rest of your whatever.

By only concerning yourself with the alt text, you're routing all the AI-related harm to screen reader users, actual humans who already experience massive social & technical marginalization.

Solve the image issues for humans.

Then, in parallel, solve your more widespread AI problem (like adding rules to your robots.txt darkvisitors.com/docs/robots-t… ).

It's much simpler to just start adding "cute cat" to your cute cat photos than it is to invent new excuses for behaviors that ultimately just harm screen reader users.

Here's a great alt text guide! axesslab.com/alt-texts/

Alt-texts: The Ultimate Guide

This post contains everything you need to know about alt-texts! When to use them and how to perfectly craft them. By me, Daniel, a web developer with vision impairment who use a screen reader in my day-to-day life.

^{Daniel Göransson (Axess Lab)}