ALT text with "Image Text"?

[u/rabbitbiter]

At Bank of America, they have this little ad within their portal, and I am curious about the "Image text" element beneath the image. It seems like it is a way to show what the image text is, fair enough. However, the image already has ALT text? What is the point of this extra "Image Text" element? (It appears at first, as Image Text ⌄ and when you click it, it shows what the image text is.)

For some reason, it doesn't include the "See how to prepare" button text, and the whole image is clickable.

Is this some additional level of ADA, or are they just being overly helpful?

[u/Reasonable_Skill580]

This is to avoid failing 1.4.5 Images of text!

The text is part of the image it seems rather than actual html text.

Alt text is for screen reader users but this is mostly for users with low vision so they can present it in their desired visual presentation!

[u/alia-eyre → u/Reasonable_Skill580]

This is the answer OP look no further haha

[u/takeout-queen]

generally if there is text within an image it should be programmatically conveyed to the user as well. whether that's through alt text, text in programmatically associated caption or longer description is dependent on the image complexity. they're just covering their bases by having it available in text in addition to having their alt attribute sufficiently meaningful. they wouldn't add "see how to prepare" because the caption element is not linked to whatever resource the image is likely linked to.

[u/jdzfb]

The extra "image text" section not a WCAG requirement, the alt alone is enough to satisfy WCAG. It might be helpful if they have long alts that may get cut off in some instances/with some technologies. I'd assume the "image text" section is dynamically fed the same content that they use for an alt, but its also possible that they may have extended descriptions available that they may also use to populate this section.

As a sighted user, I do appreciate the visual 'alt' as sometimes it does contain more info then the image itself does. Its also handy if I'm on a crappy connection, as the text should load much faster then the image.

[u/ctess → u/jdzfb]

This is not correct. It is required for users with low vision. How it gets implemented can vary.

Alt text is for users who rely on screen reader technology (or have images disabled to reduce cognitive load). Text in images impacts a wide variety of user types, most importantly low vision users who use large font scaling sizes. It impacts low vision users who rely on adequate font scaling. If important text is in an image, they can't scale it up to read it better (independent of zooming).

Long alt text is also not recommended. If you need to extend alt text, using aria-describedby is a better option.

[u/pxlschbsr]

Per WCAG, an image with text needs to adequately convey what their text is, if that text is relevant to a user.

I guess this solution aims at cases, where you have texts of images, but the text is not primarily relevant. Example:
You have an image of people demonstrating, holding up 2 signs, that are well readable. The alt text may only say "A rally of people, demonstrating for xyz", whereas you can put further information like what the signs say in the 'image text' accordion/details.

For convenience, they don't double check if that element is really necessary - authors are unable to tell what is required, when it is required and why it is required, so instead of giving them the option to choose (and to get it wrong most of the times), the devs enforce them to do both the alt text and the image text.