I like taking pictures. Sometimes, the pictures end up being quite good, and they make me happy. Every now and then, I publish some of them on this site.

Meanwhile, I try to do the right thing when it comes to accessibility, including on this site. One of the more well-known aspects of accessibility online relates to the use of "alt" text on images: a textual description of each image, so that those people who can't see the image, don't miss out on what the image is there to convey. Alt text matters. Without alt text, far too many social media posts end up being something like:

My project is due in tomorrow, and I'm just like [maybe a picture of a person]

which of course is meaningless. Alt text matters. All the images on this blog have alt text.

My photographs, on the other hand, go into a different section, not into the blog. I was recently thinking again about the question: What alt text, if any, should I add to my photographs? And why?

Let's take this photo as an example. Here are a few possible values for the alt text:

1. Nothing. Just leave the alt text empty.
2. "A view from inside a room, looking outside, past a group of people, over to a large domed building"
3. "A view from the Tate Modern gallery in London, over to St. Paul's Cathedral"
4. "A view from the Tate Modern gallery in London, over to St. Paul's Cathedral. We, the viewer, are inside; there is one other person in the room. They are standing next to the window, off to the side. They are looking at the view, just as we are. Outside on the balcony, there are 15 or so people, almost all of whom are are also looking towards the cathedral. It's a sunny day with light patchy cloud."

The first option — no alt text at all — tells the blind visitor to the site nothing. The other options are all factual descriptions of the photograph, to varying degrees of detail. So how much detail is the right amount of detail? Is it just "as much as I want to add"?

There is another option. All of those options were factual descriptions of the image. But what about describing the non-factual stuff? I could add talk about colour palettes, and depth of field, framing, reflections, contrast, lighting, motion, chance, whimsy, and a myriad of other things. I could talk about how I experience the photograph; about how I interpret it, what it reminds me of, what it makes me think, and feel. I could put some or all of that into the alt text. Then again, if I did that, then that information would essentially be available only to blind users, or rather to those who regularly read the alt text. So maybe that stuff belongs instead in the page text, visible next to or below the image, so that sighted and non-sighted people alike can read it.

There is, however, a reason that I don't want to do that; I don't want to describe my experiences of the photo at all. Not to get too pretentious about it, but the photos under /photographs are there as art. They are there to be experienced, to be interpreted by you, the viewer, the web site visitor. If I were to write an article about "My visit to London", which perhaps mentioned that it was a nice sunny day and that I went to the Tate Modern, then that photograph would be a perfectly suitable image to accompany that article, and in which case, one of the "factual" alt text options would probably be a appropriate. On the other hand, exactly the same photograph in a different context — i.e. /photographs, which is essentially an art gallery — requires treating differently.

If I add the factual alt text, then that's OK, but it doesn't allow the user to experience the photograph at all. They don't get to enjoy it, or to feel it, or to have it awaken thoughts and feelings within themselves. Absent of the visual, the whole emotion and interpretation layers of the art remain locked away. And given that the whole point of that part of the site is that artistic angle, then the such alt text adds nothing. And indeed, alt text can never be enough to replace the visual. Not unless I want to get into writing prose or poetry, and then using that as the alt — but then that would be an entirely separate section of the site.

All of which leads me back to the first couple of options: either that the photographs under /photographs do not have any alt text, and that's a deliberate choice, made because no alt text can ever be enough; or just a simple, factual description.

So are these photographs accessible to non-sighted people? Mostly, no, but I can at least give the basics of what is shown. However: working out why it's shown, what it means, and how it makes you feel, is something that I suspect will inevitably remain at the more "sighted" end of the spectrum.