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Alternative text character limit

Luke.M.268

Hi all,

I have noticed that when adding alt text to an image when uploading the alt text limit is 200 characters. However, when adding alt text to an existing image, there does not appear to be a character limit? Is this a bug? Is there a reason for this? While alt text should be succinct, I don't think 200 is a useful limit. Thoughts?

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Comments

Stefanie.B.518

@Luke.M.268
I truly wasn't aware that there was a current variation in the experience of uploading alt text in this way.
Grateful to you for posting here because you've helped me learn more about this too.

I reached out to some folks here at D2L who shared the following explanation for this difference:

We have set a 200-character limit for uploading alt text in the Brightspace HTML Editor because keeping alt text brief is a best practice and practically useful to screen reader users. The workaround for rare cases where it is necessary to have 201 characters or more is to edit the image after upload.

A screen-reader will not cut off alt text but long alt texts get cumbersome as sometimes it is read in one go and it's hard break it into pieces. 100 to 125 characters is a good limit to aim for. If the image is complicated, longer descriptions might likely be useful even to those who are sighted. Weave them into the surrounding text. Or add a link below the image to a document or another page with the longer description.

Carin.H.549

Hi. Thanks for your question. We have set a 200-character limit for uploading alt text in the Brightspace HTML Editor because keeping alt text brief is a best practice and practically useful to screen reader users. The workaround for rare cases where it is necessary to have 201 characters or more is to edit the image after upload.

A screen-reader will not cut off alt text but long alt texts get cumbersome as sometimes it is read in one go and it's hard to break it into pieces. 100 to 125 characters is a good limit to aim for. If the image is complicated, longer descriptions might likely be useful even to those who are sighted. Weave them into the surrounding text. Or add a link below the image to a document or another page with the longer description. I hope this helps.