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[Doc]: Add alt text to figures in documentation #24309
Description
Documentation Link
No response
Problem
None of our images have alt-text and that's becoming a standard now and our communication's guidelines say we should add alt-text when the platform allows.
Suggested improvement
The steps involved in having a consistent way to add alt text to our docs are
code
- Add wai-aria property to the artist accessibility annotations. #21328
- [Bug]: plot directive not handling indentation of long option strings #29649
- enable support of alt text in sphinx gallery scraper
- add passing through alt-text to any file types that support it
docs
- replace alt text guidelines in communication guidelines with a standalone documentation page on alt-text for visualization best practices, update links in communications and pull requests guidelines to post to it.
- write tutorial on making accessible viz
- document using alt_aria as part of and alt text and update the PR template w/ a nudge to use alt text
- add alt text to gallery files: I do it here in order of visibility, but traffic is probably a better way to prioritize)
- plot gallery - it feeds the home page gallery so is probably highest profile
- tutorials - doesn't always have code for the images
- gallery
- narrative text
- older whats news and anything missing from the above
Adding alt text is piles of work and probably would benefit from strategy and partnerships w/ classes/sprints or hiring someone depending on timeline.
Activity
oscargus commentedon Oct 31, 2022
PDF does also support alt-texts (and has some other accessibility support). See 14.9.3 Alternate Descriptions in https://opensource.adobe.com/dc-acrobat-sdk-docs/pdfstandards/PDF32000_2008.pdf
story645 commentedon Oct 31, 2022
I think a parallel issue to this one is track down which file types/backends support alt-text and update accordingly. Tom put in support for svg in #21328
oscargus commentedon Dec 1, 2022
I just sent an email to a Swedish researcher asking for some pointers. Let us see if I get some answer. Also, found this paper which seems quite relevant: https://content.iospress.com/articles/technology-and-disability/tad170181 (I have not read it yet, but I guess the references and citing papers can be worthwhile, even if we may not be interested in automation in the first place).
Edit: this may be worthwhile checking as well https://viewplus.com/product/audio-graphing-calculator/
tacaswell commentedon May 9, 2024
https://dev.exiv2.org/projects/exiv2/wiki/The_Metadata_in_PNG_files
https://iptc.org/std/photometadata/specification/IPTC-PhotoMetadata#alt-text-accessibility
https://exiv2.org/tags.html / https://www.cipa.jp/std/documents/e/DC-008-2012_E.pdf
There are reasonable places to put "alt text" (although IPTC makes a distinction between "ald text" and "image description").
options:
fig.savefig('...png', metadata={'alt': 'The alt text'})works (any key works), also worksfig.savefig('/tmp/test.svg', metadata={'Description': 'This is alt text'}),fig.savefig('/tmp/test.pdf', metadata={'Alt': 'This is alt text'})also works (but warns). Other raster formats do not work (fails inimsave), but that is a matter of sorting out the right invocation to pillow.alt_textkeyword tosavefigthat is threaded through each of the backends to translate to the correct name for that file formatalt_textordescriptionattribute toFigurethat is the default value threaded throughsavefig(..., alt_text)open questions:
Other tasks: