Thanks–I tried some more things, and I’m not sure how to examine the Blorb file for resource description chunks, so maybe I should just ask this question: for interpreters that do support alt text, is it automatically shown on the screen along with the image? Or how is it meant to be displayed?
No, alt text is for screenreaders and other alternative interfaces: it’s not displayed. Many social-media platforms make a point of making it visible to sighted users as well in some fashion, but that’s a separate thing that they’re doing with custom code. I usually just use the inspector to see if an image has an alt="blah blah blah" attribute – there’s also the accessibility properties inspector or something, but I find that pretty useless.
Edit: oh, wait. interpreters could do the same thing. But if they display it visibly, then they’d have to go out of their way to make that visible text not visible to screenreaders, or they’d see it twice.
Ok, I think I found the alt text for two of the things I was looking at. Thanks!
If I put in alt text and then also display that same text alongside the graphics, then will it display twice for screenreader users?
(Oh, hmm–I guess the answer to that might be different depending on the interpreter, if not all graphic-supporting interpreters use alt text.)
Sounds like you’re sorted, but for the record, you can use a current version of blorbtool.py (from the Blorb webpage):
$ python3 ./blorbtool.py Transparent.gblorb display RDes
* 'RDes' (633 bytes, start 11083630)
4 entries:
'Pict' resource 3: "The logo with the word 'Transparent' in blurry green nightvision with a flash of light behind it."
'Pict' resource 4: "A note that reads 'Fusebox: from front door go northwest to stairs, south to mission control, then east till you hit the kitchen. Go down cellar steps - be careful! - box at bottom.'"
'Pict' resource 5: "A child's crayon drawing of a stick figure inside a heavy circular black sun with single line rays emanating from it - or perhaps it's a person lying at the bottom of a well? Across the bottom, carefully lettered in different colors, are the words 'eat you'."
'Pict' resource 6: "A simplified map of the manor and grounds."
Yes, I was using Lectrote. I was running this test file:
https://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/i7imagealttexts.gblorb
If you drag a blorb file onto the web blorb tool page: BlorbTool
…you can see the alt text info.
Hello, wow, how did I not know about this web version?
Wait, I thought it was standard practice for web browsers to display the alt text of an image as a tooltip when hovering the mouse cursor over an image on a web page… Or at least, I thought it was alt-text that provided the content for such tooltips back when I had a working eye and used a mouse.
And to clarify my previous statement, I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure my Desktop’s GPU is running all the calculations it would be running regardless and sending a video signal to the video ports even though there’s no monitor connected to recieve that signal and display the results, similar to how if you have music playing, it keeps going if you unplug your ear phones or the speakers from the audio jacks.
It’s the title attribute that provides the hover tooltip, not the alt attribute. Often people set them to the same thing, though they’re not meant to be used that way.
Huh, wasn’t aware their was a title attribute in HTML or any use of the word title in HTML aside from the tag to set what shows up in the title bar or on the tab bar… and now I’m kind of curious what happens if you hover the mouse over an image with defined alt text but no defined title or move a screen reader’s reading cursor to an image with a defined title but no defined alt text.
Depends on the browser! Older ones typically used alt for both if there wasn’t a defined title, but nowadays you generally don’t get any tooltip at all if there’s no title specified.
Thanks, everybody!