As a helpful example only, this otherwise great answer to Is Starship planned to fly directly to the ISS without first stage? Is it even possible? relies heavily on the readers ability to read screenshots of tweets. The following ~120 words from four tweets are available only to folks who can interpret screenshots of text.
SSTO = Not gonna happen. People need to stop peeing their pants for an SSTO. YES, getting to orbit is possible with most modern rockets with a single stage. But doing any actual work and ESPECIALLY having margins to come back and land is no. It's just not beneficial.
Exactly. We’re on the wrong planet for SSTO. No problem on Mars or any of the moons.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't @elonmusk state a few times that StarShip cannot do SSTO on Earth? Did I miss an update? Are the raptors more powerful than earlier thought?
It technically could, but wouldn’t have enough mass margin for a heat shield, landing propellant or legs, so not reusable
Since I often struggle reading non-English websites where critical information is displayed as images of logograms (as opposed to an alphabet that one might learn in a finite amount of time) instead of selectable text that can be copy/pasted into google translate, I have some small degree of understanding how frustrating this might be to folks using screen readers.
Note: in addition to screen reader readability; there is also search engine search-ability concerns as well.
Question: Shall we make it explicit site policy that screenshots of text ≠ readable text? If we have a well-received answer that says simply that any text information that's a necessary part of an answer be displayed as text, it can be added to our Community Policy Repository.
I'd say keep it narrow; no reason for an absolutely ban on screenshots that contain text, but as a minimum requirement if one really wants them in a post one must do both of the following:
- Also past the text as a block quote for folks who don't read pictures and for search engines.
- Replace
[enter image description here]
with the URL of the tweet, or an statement that it's the same text that's block quoted, or if it's short, the text itself.
See answer(s) to:
Are there any particular characters or sequences that should never be put in an image description? (no Vulcan)
An answer could recommend best practices, but primarily the goal is to make sure any text that's a necessary part of the answer is present as plain text for screen readers and search engines, and the associated images contain something more helpful than [enter image description here]
.
site-policy
orpost-content
orimages
tag. $\endgroup$[enter image description here]
is that the image description does not qualify as alt text of the kind that screen readers can use. It is instead the text that SE/SO uses when the image can't be rendered. SE/SO does not support alt text. I've asked, and apparently this support might be forthcoming when the Sun becomes a red giant. Or maybe later. I still do try to provide image descriptions. $\endgroup$