[edit] Template needing formating

Template:Infobox college football player needs alt text formating for use at Tate Forcier and many other places.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 00:40, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

done. Eubulides (talk) 03:05, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Some problems and suggestions

Firstly, where am I coming from? I have a blind parent, have worked as a house parent to blind children, and have many years of experience writing and conducting cultural tours for blind (and sighted) people. If alt captions are written for the blind, then they really need to meet their needs.

• Although Wiki strives to be neutral and factually accurate and dismisses descriptive language as "Point of View" and "Peacock", this type of language is often exactly what a blind person needs in order to "visualise" or comprehend the image. To say that a photo potrait of Vincent van Gogh shows a "Black and white image of a man with curly hair seen from the shoulder up wearing a suit and tie" is meaningless. To say that a "formal portrait of the artist shows him with ill-kempt hair and a wary, watchful expression" is interpretive, but it also useful because it conveys a picture. That is what we are about, in writing alt captions.

Several very poor examples are cited on this project page as "good examples". The staircase in the Vatican is a very poor example. The writer has merely attempted to give the dimensions, with no real description of the object itself. The measurments convey very little to many sighted people and even less to most blind ones. To say that the spiral staircase is of "vast size" is much more useful, because most spiral staicases are very narrow indeed. In this case "big" or even "enormous" are not enough to convey the impression of this very unusual structure. "Vast" is a single word that conveys the sense of the photograph.

Engraving of Charles Dickens

Mezzotint of Ada Lovelace

• Editors need to really "look hard" before they attempt to describe anything. I have deleted some absolute twaddle from alt descriptions, simply because the editor had mistaken a blob or a scratch on the image for an object, or had attempted to decribe something they knew nothing about.
• In the case of a symbolic object getting the description exactly right is important. If the editor writes that an angel is handing a saint a "small branch" or "a bunch of leaves" or "some foliage" then the meaning of this interaction is lost to any blind person. If the angel is handing the saint a "palm frond" then this is what needs to be said. I urge editors to look hard and identify things accurately. If you can't identify the symbolic object yourself, then ask another editor, or look it up.
• Wikipedia has experts in almost everything. Descriptions of the hairstyles and costume worn by people in photos are often inadequate or wrong. If in doubt, go to a page about the costume of the period, find an appropriate editor and ask for help. This applies to many other areas of expertise.

• If you are going to attempt to write alt captions about historic subjects then you need to be able to recognise the medium used for a particulr image. Both in Wikimedia Commons and in alt captions I repeatedly find printed pictures described are "drawings". The most common type of black and white image from the 18th and 19th centuries are steel engravings. They were used in papers, books and maps and are very common as text illustrations in older encyclopedias. Because they are linear they may be mistaken for a very careful and detailed drawings. These images are always linear. There was no way to print a largish flat black area by this technique. For this reason, all areas that in a photo or painting would appear black, in an engraving appear striped or hatched. I have just corrected two edits at Marshalsea that stated that men were wearing "a tweed jacket". The likelihood of their jackets being tweed rather than black broadcloth is remote. The mistake was caused by the writer's interpretation of the limitations of the printing technique by which the original image was created. Mezzotint is a printing technique that is particularly confusing because they can appear very smooth and photo-like.
• Because the alt caption is "normally read before the picture caption", then the alt caption also needs to clearly state the subject.

Full length picture of man of about 35 in military uniform standing in interior followed by David's portrait of Napoleon is less useful than Full length portrait of Napoleon aged about 35, in military uniform standing in interior followed by David's portrait of Napoleon. Yes, it is a little repetitious, but it means that the blind person knows from the outset who is being described and doesn't have to wait until the end to find out which one of a hundred million people the military man might be.

• Know when to omit a caption. Two men seated on a couch with two younger men seated on another couch (another "good example" drawn from the project page) is such a useless description that it would be better to leave it out altogether and let the quite lengthy picture caption stand alone.
• State what the medium is. Is it a fresco, an oil painting, an altarpiece, a woodcut, an engraving, a drawing, a news image, a photo, a formal photo, a snapshot? Don't trust Wikimedia Commons to have the description correct for black and white images.
• Images of artworks and complex subjects may require quite lengthy description.
• Colours are important. Most blind people have been sighted. Many "clinically blind" people have residual sight. Many people who are totally blind from birth understand that different colours are associated with different concepts, and that a black jacket, a grey jacket and a bright yellow jacket all convey different things about the wearer. As do a grey sky, a blue sky and a red sky.
• Don't treat blind people like fools. Presume that they will apply the information in the body of the article to an understanding of the pictures. If the article says that a beam engine has a pivotted horizontal beam at the top and a large flywheel driving a gear, then the alt caption to the accompanying picture does not need to describe the beam and the wheel again. It is sufficient to say that the photo shows a beam engine operating in a 19th century factory.

Amandajm (talk) 02:07, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks very much for your well-thought-out comments. I agree with most of them, and I'd like to use them to improve the project page. To help get started, is Image:VincentVanGoghFoto.jpg the van Gogh image mentioned in the 1st bullet? and is its context the Letters section of Vincent van Gogh? I'm asking because I'd like to use this as an example in the project page. Eubulides (talk) 06:49, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually there are two photos of Vincent, one further down the page of him at thirteen.Amandajm (talk) 11:56, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

OK, but the alt text in your 1st bullet seems to be talking about the other one. I used that one to add a new subsection Neutral, not superficial that attempts to address the point raised by the 1st bullet's 1st paragraph. Does it do the job? Eubulides (talk) 02:16, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

• "Several very poor examples are cited on this project page as "good examples". The staircase in the Vatican is a very poor example." Could you specify the other examples that are "very poor"? that would help improve the page. These examples are merely cited as being "better" than "flawed", which does not necessarily mean "good"; that being said, the "better" examples shouldn't have serious flaws. Anyway, the Vatican spiral example is one that I contrived merely to show lots of examples of unnecessarily tricky lettering. Ideally, of course, we'd have an example that is high-quality except for the lots-of-tricky-lettering cruft. I see that you've rewritten that alt text greatly in Vatican Museums, which makes it much better for the article it's in, but renders it unsuitable as an example of tricky lettering. I took the liberty of finding another occurrence of the same image, in Stairway, for which a briefer alt text with those numbers might be appropriate, and switched to that example, rewording the alt text to start with "Vast". Perhaps someone can think of a better example for illustrating the tricky-lettering point, if this is not good enough.
• "Editors need to really "look hard" before they attempt to describe anything." I added a section Accuracy paragraph about accuracy to WP:ALT#Verifiability along those lines. The example there is perhaps not the best: do you have a specific example of an image with saints and palm fronds?
• "State what the medium is" No, for most Wikipedia images mentioning the medium will cause more trouble (by wasting the reader's time) than it will cure. In the current featured article The Time Traveler's Wife, for example, the medium is irrelevant for three of the four images. The only image it's relevant for, File:Leandro Bassano - Penelope.jpg, is a 16th-century painting where medium is part of the artistic effect and is arguably important; the other images are all contemporary photographs and the phrase "Photograph of" wastes the reader's time. Even paintings do not always need to have their medium mentioned, if the focus of the article is on the object being painted and not on the style or painting. For example, it's fine that the alt text for the lead image of the featured article Battle of Grand Port focuses on the action depicted, and does not bother to mention that it's a painting, much less that it's oil on canvas.

Thanks again for the comments; I'll follow up later on some of the other points the comments raised. Eubulides (talk) 09:09, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

• "Full length portrait of Napoleon aged about 35, in military uniform" WP:ALT#Verifiability already says that this alt text is OK, because Napoleon is iconic: most readers can be expected to know what he looks like. However, a more typical case is an image like this (taken from Daylight saving time):

G.V. Hudson invented modern DST, proposing it first in 1895.

[[Image:G.V.-Hudson-Auckland-Islands-Party.jpeg |thumb |107px |alt=Fuzzy head-and-shoulders photo of a 40-year-old man in a cloth cap and mustache. |[[George Vernon Hudson|G.V. Hudson]] invented modern DST, proposing it first in 1895.]]

The sighted reader will see the image first and won't know who it is, but will see the mustache, the cloth cap, and the approximate age of the illustrated person. The alt text is supposed to substitute for the image, so it replicates the experience of the sighted reader by repeating the information that the sighted reader sees. The sighted reader won't know the identity of the man in question, so the alt text shouldn't include the identity either. The man's identity is given in the caption, which the sighted and visually impaired reader both encounter after the image or its alt text.

More later. Eubulides (talk) 22:34, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

• "I repeatedly find printed pictures described are 'drawings'" I attempted to address this by adding "do not call an image a drawing if it is actually an engraving or a woodcut". Further improvements are welcome. Eubulides (talk) 07:55, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
• "Know when to omit a caption." I assume that you meant to write "Know when to omit alt text." However, the example you gave is of an image that has a function (namely, if you click on it something happens), and as per the W3C guidelines, it has to have some alt text, even if it's very brief and is a placeholder.
• "Two men seated on a couch with two younger men seated on another couch (another "good example" drawn from the project page) is such a useless description" I attempted to improve this by replacing it with "Four men in suits, two middle-aged and two in their thirties, sit smiling around a glossy wood table. A photographer hovers in the background." The idea is to convey to the visually impaired reader the gloss of success that Bure achieved. Further suggestions for improvement are welcome.
• "Images of artworks and complex subjects may require quite lengthy description." I added to WP:ALT#Brevity the qualifier "Although images of complex subjects may need long descriptions" before the general statement "alt text should be considerably shorter than a hundred words for all but the most detailed images".

More later. Eubulides (talk) 07:55, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

• "Wikipedia has experts in almost everything." I added brief coverage of that topic to the 2nd paragraph in WP:ALT#Verifiability.
• "Colours are important." Sometimes they are, sometimes they're not. I more often find that editors mention color when they shouldn't, than when they should. For example, the alt text for an image might say that it's a map where London is marked with a "red dot"; here, the color is irrelevant. Currently, the text in WP:ALT#Context says "For example, the alt text of the image at right might focus on the color of the officer's uniform in Blue, on the officer's hat in Peaked cap, and on the stone lion in Public art." This briefly mentions color as sometimes being important; if it would help to say more here, suggestion for specific wording improvement would be welcome.
• "Don't treat blind people like fools." The example in that paragraph seemed to be pretty much a duplicate of the point made in WP:ALT#Repetition. If there's something deeper in there that I missed, please let us know.

Eubulides (talk) 06:51, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Graphs

I'm completely stumped as to how to write alt text for a graph like File:GFCrecord.jpg - how do I describe it? Would something like "A graph with X-axis values from 1 to 92 and Y-axis values from 1950 to 2008, with a line ranging from as low as 91 to as high as 31" really mean anything to a person who couldn't view the graph itself?

Yes, the point is not that alt text is a complete substitute for the image; it is that it is a partial substitute that is better than nothing. For that graph, the alt text you gave is OK. However, if the context is Gillingham F.C. #Statistics and records, it's better to use alt text that explains the graphical information in a form that is more useful textually for that context. So, something like "From 1950 to 2008 the position, on a scale from 1 to 92, was usually in the third quartile from the top. In three periods around 1960, 1970, and 1990 it was in the fourth quartile, and in one period around 2000 it was in the second." might be a bit better. Eubulides (talk) 19:53, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Assistance request at World War I

None of the images in this article currently have ALT text. We're expecting very high readership over the next two weeks. Would an adept please consider helping us out? Thanks, LeadSongDog come howl 16:48, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I took a brief look and fixed the only tricky bit that I saw, a gallery of videos. I also fixed {{World War I}}, which included some icons indirectly. The remaining images look fairly routine, but if you need help with a particular problem please drop a line here. Eubulides (talk) 17:21, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Maps

I was wondering if someone could take a quick look at List of Parliamentary constituencies in Hertfordshire. Reading through the maps section here, I'm not too sure whether the maps would be considered as useful additions (not decorative but not essential, and therefore requiring very basic alt text), or if they assume readers' access to the map/knowledge of the area, and therefore need a comprehensive description. If its the latter, I was wondering if someone would be happy to do one or two as examples from which I can hopefully learn. Thanks in advance, WFCforLife (talk) 06:03, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I think those little maps are useful, as most people won't know where the locations are without maps. Please see List of counties in New Jersey for some inspiration. Those alt text descriptions are relatively simple but give non-New-Jersey-experts a brief feel for where each county is. Please don't forget the alt text for the lead image. Eubulides (talk) 06:49, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the link, that's a good inspiration (and not just for the alt text!). I've added a very brief alt text for the lead image. A longer alt text would normally be desirable, but I intend to substitute it for a prettier one in the near future anyway. Thanks again! WFCforLife (talk) 21:14, 8 November 2009 (UTC)