Accessibility: confusion between caption and alternative text leads to badly accessible images #497
Labels
semver/major
This is a breaking change
status/verified
This has been checked by a maintainer
type/request
This is great to have
At the time of writing, when you place an image alone on its paragraph with alt text, such as :
...the image is displayed as a centred figure, with the alternative text displayed below the image as a caption. If you want to display a centred image like this without the so-called "caption", you need to place it in a central block, as follows:
This is annoying, and more importantly, it misleads people as to what an alternative text really is. Alternative texts are not captions, they both have a completely different purpose. A text alternative is a precise and concise description of the image, useful for those who can't see it, whereas a caption is a complement to the image, for example by giving a context, adding sources and credits, etc.
This confusion frequently arises when new zmarkdown users ask why rich text cannot be included in the alt text of images: they think that the alt text is a caption. Alternative text is mainly meant to be spoken out loud, written on a Braille display, or read by a robot (search engine, etc.)—writing it as rich text doesn't make sense.
I suggest that:
Figure:
attribute can still be used for a real caption);The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered: