Note: this is Yue-ix mod speaking - I wanted to offer an answer from my own visual artist perspective.
That's a good question. Our understanding is that alt-text is there to describe content for people who can’t access it - for disability or technological reasons. However, one key point of alt-text is to differentiate between images that are decorative and images that are informative, since alt-text means to convey information. Sometimes, that core information is simply "icon of Zhu Hong smiling", or "computer drawing of Zhao Yunlan with long hair. Shen Wei is brushing it. Both are very happy." In that context, yes, we recommend purely visual works to have alt-text
However, in the case of your icons posts, I don’t think you need to describe each icon. IMO, the pertinent information is often our characters, themes or subjects. You already wrote those down in this entry last year - I'd say for an equivalent piece you could simply cope-paste that in the alt, or perhaps add "touching forehead" for thoroughness. Does that make sense?
Same for icons: it would convey the necessary information to simply have the same type of header as you do on DW or posts like this, or, in the alt of the first image, write "5 icons of Zhu Yilong" or "2 icons featuring Shen Wei's swords".
To note though: an “empty” alt-text on every icon code would still be best (aka: alt="") , because in a total absence of any tag some screen-readers or browser will read/display the full URL instead. (See full explanation on w3c here).
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2020-11-02 03:06 am (UTC)Note: this is Yue-ix mod speaking - I wanted to offer an answer from my own visual artist perspective.
That's a good question. Our understanding is that alt-text is there to describe content for people who can’t access it - for disability or technological reasons. However, one key point of alt-text is to differentiate between images that are decorative and images that are informative, since alt-text means to convey information. Sometimes, that core information is simply "icon of Zhu Hong smiling", or "computer drawing of Zhao Yunlan with long hair. Shen Wei is brushing it. Both are very happy." In that context, yes, we recommend purely visual works to have alt-text
However, in the case of your icons posts, I don’t think you need to describe each icon. IMO, the pertinent information is often our characters, themes or subjects. You already wrote those down in this entry last year - I'd say for an equivalent piece you could simply cope-paste that in the alt, or perhaps add "touching forehead" for thoroughness. Does that make sense?
Same for icons: it would convey the necessary information to simply have the same type of header as you do on DW or posts like this, or, in the alt of the first image, write "5 icons of Zhu Yilong" or "2 icons featuring Shen Wei's swords".
To note though: an “empty” alt-text on every icon code would still be best (aka: alt="") , because in a total absence of any tag some screen-readers or browser will read/display the full URL instead. (See full explanation on w3c here).
I hope this helps!