The internet has become 3 massive multi-user blogs, each largely consisting of screenshots taken of the other two. This kind of blows, and not just for the usual reasons that may spring to mind.
Images are a terrible medium for online communication! Not everyone online uses a monitor. Any messages contained in a picture is straight up unacceptable without alt-text. It also makes it harder to find and fact check sources, or to spread a thought or idea further than yet another image upload. Copy/pasting text is just plain easier than downloading and uploading.
If you're going through the trouble of creating an image post, take an extra minuite to copy/past (or even transcribe) the source text into the alt-text submission. It's not much, but it goes a ways to improving how we use this blasted network!
https://uxdesign.cc/how-to-write-an-image-description-2f30d3bf5546
In my post above, I put an image with:
On a computer, the only browser I tested was Firefox. The title text displayed on mouse hover. Both title and alt text were visible in the HTML page source.
On mobile, I was only testing with Safari. The title text displays on long press. The post source displays when I click the post source button.
Alt text aren't supposed to be rendered.
Whether that's a good thing? I don't really think so, sure makes it a lot harder to get the average person to care about them.
Maybe a tooltip should be added, or the alt text should be copied to the title as well when there is no title text.
Copying the alt to the title may result in the same text being presented twice.
If you show it as a tooltip, people will use it as a tooltip.
I guess that's why it's hidden so we'll. The average webdev only learning about alt texts through search engine optimization might be preferable outcome over them approaching it as a visual design feature.