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[spec] Clarify purpose of alt-text

Katarina Eriksson gmym at coopdot.com

Mon Mar 1 00:47:52 GMT 2021

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On Sunday, February 28, 2021 10:28 PM, Adnan Maolood <me at adnano.co> wrote:

I think the following conventions can be adopted instead:
1. Authors of Gemini text are STRONGLY encouraged to add alt text to
ASCII art and other inacessible preformatted text to prevent it from
being read aloud by screen readers. For example:
```ASCII art of a smiley face
:)
```

Agreed, though I would like to see a space character between "```" and the alt text in this case.

2. Code, poems, and other accessible text SHOULD NOT use alt text and
instead prefer to place any descriptive text above or below the
preformatted text. For example:
Here is a code snippet demonstrating how to use print:
```
print("Hello, world!")
```

I like the approach of being extra clear on what's to come, even to people who don't need the description.

If the code isn't considered accessible, it could be marked with a single word alt text with no whitespace, like this:

This is how it looks like minified: ```javascript

Though, maybe it's better to provide a separate file at that point.

3. Clients should allow the user to skip displaying preformatted text.[...]

I think there are no disagreements here.

--Katarina