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Another reason to use ALT text which some people might not have considered: it benefits people who are not visually impaired as well.

As #Mastodon is #decentralized there is no central network hosting all of the images. Should the admin of a server decide to purge old images to save space, users accessing older posts will not know what an image was without an ALT text.

Take this post from 2022 for example.

@alttexthalloffame

A screenshot of a Mastodon post from 2022 which lists 3 textual steps for catching a mountain lion, followed by an image showing the fourth step. However, the image is no longer available as the original server has purged it. The image has an ALT text, allowing the reader to understand what the fourth step would have been, had the image still been available to see. If the original poster had not included this ALT text, readers would have been left with an incomplete understanding of the original post.
#Mastodon #decentralized @Alt Text Hall of Fame

André Polykanine reshared this.

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