How do I add alt-text on images and other accessibility features for screen reader users when the alt-text module does not appear to do that?

What’s up with the alt-text module and accessibility settings being confusing and underdeveloped. The documentation said Omeka S was compatible with accessibility guidelines. What’s going on.

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I did it via custom theme adding to media render:

title="<?php echo $media->displayTitle(); ?>" alt="<?php echo $media->displayTitle(); ?>"

Hope it helps you.

For a full rundown of core Omeka S and accessibility standards, your best bet is to review the conformance report, which is linked from the accessibility statement. If there are features which aren’t working for a screen reader, it’s worth making an issue on the core.

The AltText module allows you to set a property in the media’s metadata to use as its alt text.

We’re currently working on integrating the alt text features from the module into the core of Omeka S, so as Megan says, definitely do reach out if there are problems, missing features, things like that.

The Alt Text module lets you either manually specify alt text in a separate text field, or choose a piece of metadata to automatically use as the alt text. Both the input for setting manual text and the metadata values that will be used are those of the Media, not the Item.

If there’s either kind of alt text specified for an image Media, it should automatically be used, unless the theme is written to manually supply an alt attribute, in which case that will be used instead.

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Also, if you were using version 1.2.0 of the module, please try upgrading to the new version 1.2.1: I found and fixed a bug with how the module works with Omeka S 3.0.0.

I’m glad that alt text is being integrated into the core of Omeka S. We’re going through and adding a dc:desc field for all media that will then be pulled as alt text by the module. I’d love to hear how others are doing it.

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In our case, the answer is: doing it poorly. Good alt text practice as I understand it from our accessibility specialists is for the alt text to vary by its image’s function in the page, but there’s only one place to put alt text right now, meaning no variation. I don’t know the solution and have respect for anyone who can untangle the knot.

The context question is hard. The Coyote project is a way to manage workflows for creating all the text for those different contexts. The key would be to yoke the Coyote output to different uses within Omeka S.

I have high hopes for a productive collaboration, but that will be a ways down the road.

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We got a question about alt-text for the YouTube iframes. WebAIM recommends adding title tags to iframes in cases like this. Would there be any way to add functionality to insert a title tag with the Alt Text value into the iframe when using the Alt Text module for YouTube media?

We can make the YouTube media type use the “alt text” in the title attribute of the iframe, yes.

This wouldn’t apply to things where the embed code comes from an external source (like oEmbed) but for the YouTube type we’re creating the iframe markup so we can put it in there.

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