I’m also obsessed with including good ALT texts in all my images since I read a tweet by a blind person a few years ago. I honestly wasn’t aware of the importance of that (other than SEO considerations) until then.

Some people might have not noticed that Large Language Models with image recognition (such as the super-popular ChatGPT Vision) are a game changer for this. There are other free genAI tools specific for images such as Clip Interrogator, but chatbots are truly a game changer: once they process the image, you can guide them to compose any type of text you want, or explain any additional details in the image. Before image processing was available in chatbots, I started by just describing the image with extreme detail, but without much care on the writing coherence and quality, and then the chatbot would recompose the text by synthesizing the important elements and improving the writing. The feature that allows you to upload the image is a game changer for the time it saves. Like any other use of genAI, many people are skeptical and reluctant to accept these tools due to ideological and passion-driven fears, but I thought my comment could be valuable to some Medium users. Here’s an ALT text of the featured image with a literary touch:

"Scattered ivory beads, each bearing a single embossed letter, converge to form the phrase 'ALT TEXT' amidst a sea of alphabetical chaos, symbolizing the clarity and purpose amidst the vastness of the digital realm, emphasizing the beacon-like role of ALT texts in navigating the online world."

This can be fine-tuned and adapted as much as one would like. The above text is just an exaggerated example of how we can play with this generative tools. Ultimately, they can save us a lot of time to focus on the more important tasks.