Help talk:Alt text

Alt vs. aria-label

Rjjiii, would you be up to adding a section comparing the use of alt and aria-label? The latter is used to improve accessibility for visually impaired editors using screen readers, but there is some overlap, and resulting confusion about how they compare and differ. I think this would be a very valuable addition to the page. Some recent discussions here, perhaps also here. A good place to start might be this one. Mathglot (talk) 22:36, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

@Mathglot I'll definitely look into it. A few quick thoughts that I have first are, that Waddie96 may be a better editor to reach out to. I have noticed a few of their edit requests on templates where they are working with ARIA. Also, should it not be covered in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility/Alternative text for images? Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 01:57, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

True, it'll likely be more useful with images, but there is the more general case, that maybe could just be a summary, and point to that page, but should still cover other cases not covered there, like tooltips, and there are some others like text-free buttons (like the ones to switch back and forth between VE and Wikitext editors), probably others I haven't thought of. Try a search like, 'Compare aria-label vs aria-labelledby vs alt' and that should dump a list of stuff to think about. Mathglot (talk) 02:10, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

Gotcha, I'll probably take a bit to read up and do research and then circle back around to it. If it seems like I've forgotten, feel free to {{ping}} me a reminder. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 02:24, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

Thanks; WP:NODEADLINE. Btw, if I forget to remind you, just {{ping}} me, and... oh, wait... Mathglot (talk) 02:40, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

@Mathglot, so I did look into this more from a couple of angles. I did a kind of proof of concept in {{tooltip/sandbox}} and posted about it at Template talk:Tooltip § Test case TemplateStyles issue. My thought is that if something should be accessible via screenreader and keyboard navigation, then it's a priority to make that available on the mobile website where most readers show up. The kind of goofy hack that I did as a proof of concept still wouldn't work on the mobile app, and could never work in print.

My other thought is that almost any kind of documentation is going to encourage people to use more ARIA, and almost all documentation for it online really emphasizes how it's a last resort and should not be used if it can be avoided. I've been slowly going through some templates where it would be useful and updating them to get more firsthand experience: {{N/a}}, {{Lenny}}, {{table flip}}, and {{shrug}}. I am thinking that if anything is included here it should be moreso a warning and maybe some links to detailed off-wiki references. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 06:43, 2 January 2026 (UTC)