Alt text: Race / Ethnicity

This came up recently and I'm still pondering.

When you're writing alt-text for an image which portrays people, do you describe the skin colour / apparent ethnicity of the people in the photo?

Why or why not?

Comments

[Savvas Stephanides]

TL;DR: No.

Ask yourself: Is the main purpose of posting the image, the race and ethnicity of the people in the photo? For an abled user look at the photo, is this the main take away?

The vast majority of the time the answer is No. For your banner photo, your alt text should be "two business people shaking hands while others around them applaud". That's it. That's all you need to convey the point of the image. The race/gender/ethnicity of the actors involved is irrelevant is this case.

[Jill Nagle]

Yes, full stop. Sorting through these issues is part of what I do for a living.

Those most affected by systemic racism have reported in numerous publications that the ethnicity of those represented in the screens they browse IS relevant to them, even though it might not seem relevant to those not impacted by systemic racism, i.e., white people.

I advocate centering the views of those most impacted who cite these reasons for including physical descriptions of people in alt text:

• The default assumption is that any given human is white -- efforts to multiply diversity will go unseen by those using screen readers if accurate descriptions in alt text are not given
• Though this discipline and its best practices are works-in-progress, we can stumble forward in good faith by including descriptions of attributes like skin tone, age, and physical abilities. Example: A light skin-toned woman in her 50s stands outside a synagogue with similarly-hued apparent family members in their 80s, plus two apparent late teens/early 20s young men