I love THEOI NOMIOI and I love Alt NPS and I somehow missed/forgot that the one was inspired by the other. Will treasure this scent even more now 💚🤎💚

4: Including a brief description isn't necessarily a bad thing and might be appreciated by some, but I would keep it concise.

(3/3) I don’t know if that works on Bluesky – do you @a11yawareness.bsky.social? (A great account to follow for more alt text advice). If the null quotes don’t work here, I’d say title and author is better than leaving the field empty, because in that case the file name will be read out instead.

(2/3) Some content management platforms let you mark decorative images as such, and screen readers will then skip them. Another way to indicate a decorative image is to include “null” alt text, by putting two empty quote marks in the alt text section (like this: “”).

(1/3) Hi Fiona, thanks for asking. If you’ve referred to some aspect of the cover design in the text of the post, but not fully described it there, I would use the alt text to convey those relevant aspects. If the cover design is irrelevant to the post, it’s considered a “decorative image”.

Writing and revising alt text was a core part of my job at a major university for several years. Here's a quick overview of best practice for how to approach it:

Be careful with block lists – they've been weaponised here in the past. Long-timer user @farhanasultana.com is a good resource for understanding more about this.

Most welcome! Glad you found it helpful 😊

Pretty sure I first came across her via your writing - I referenced two of your books in my PhD dissertation :) (Read your memoir a few months ago and it still resonates. Thanks for giving us so much of your inner world, in such moving prose.) #fangirl lol

The Death and Life of Great American Cities - Wikipedia

Great piece, with strong echos of Jane Jacobs' seminal work – particularly in regard to the safety created by "eyes on the street" at the neighbourhood level.

YES YES YES. And for those new to using ALT text:

My sister is a long-time Ashevillle resident. I still can't get my head around what's happened in WNC, and the long road ahead for you all. Sending much love from Australia.

A photo of a lilac tree in full bloom in the front yard of an inner city house, with multiple cascades of pale purple flower clusters hanging from the branches. A native Australian honeybee hovers just above one of the flowers.

It's springtime in #Australia and everything's in bloom. Including my hay fever, but I'll take the hit for the sake of the #bees. #photography #urban #nature

Love that #Bluesky puts its #alt tool front & center. Pro tip for those new to writing for #accessibility: focus on information and evocation. Why have you used the image? Which elements convey what the user needs to know? Exhaustive description is just info overload; include relevant details only.

A photo taken at night in a pitch black laneway, with a tin fence and a tree partially illuminated at the end of the laneway. A transmission tower looms in the darkness above the scene.

Nightwalking the places in between, drifting from signal to static and back again. What's out there? What's in here? #photography #laneways #liminal #psychogeography

A photo of a cute pale yellow letterbox, with a moveable-letters sign showing through a clear panel in the box. The sign reads "I miss you too xo". Below this is a photo of the same kind of sign, in the window of a different house. The sign reads "It is probably a trap"

#microfiction spotted in the wild

Magnetic poetry on a rusty old baking sheet. The poem reads "everything is a whisper between nothing and now / green paint / more than form / shimmer / appear / make music with the storm / then breathe / and feel the balance of being a body"

Turns out an old baking sheet makes an excellent canvas for
#magneticpoetry. Here for all your #arttherapy hacks.