Examples of Auto-Generated Alternative Text

We’ve said many times in Content for Everyone that you cannot rely on auto-generated text to deliver correct meaning for captions, transcripts, or alternative text. We provided an example in the “Audio/Video” part of the “Practical Guide to Improving Your Content’s Accessibility” section of poor auto-generation for a transcript. Here we’ve got a few examples of auto-generated alternative text on social media to illustrate why you don’t want to leave this kind of text in place.

Here’s an example of a book promo post Jeff did on Facebook.

Facebook post from Jeff from June 2022 detailing an author promotion. It includes the text of the post as well as the image that was part of the post. Text on this page indicates more about this and the example it illustrates.
In the text for this post, Jeff included information about the “Read with Pride” promo, the number of authors participating, , and specific details about the book I was featuring (Somewhere on Mackinac) and its price, a partial list of authors included, and the link to find a list of all the books (looking back on this now, it was a mistake not to include the dates of the promo). The image with the post features a man holding a rainbow-striped heart between his hands, text that reads “Read with Pride 17 – 27 June” and a cover of Somewhere on Mackinac with a 99 cent starburst.

The alternative text Facebook generated was this: “May be an image of text that says ‘1 106 2 i 99$ Read with Pride 17-27 JUNE Somewhere ON MACKINAC Jeff Adams’ .”

As you can see that isn’t helpful to anyone.

The image is not adding any information to the details already included in the post’s text, thus, ideally, the alternative text could’ve been blank. However, Facebook and Instagram don’t allow you to have blank alternative text. If you do nothing, the auto-generated text stays in place. So, Jeff created this alternative text to describe the image: “Book cover for ‘Somewhere on Mackinac’ by Jeff Adams with a 99 cent price showing. On the cover are two men with Mackinac Island’s Grand Hotel in the background. Next to the cover are hands holding a rainbow heart and text reading ‘Read with Pride. 17 to 27 June.”

Here’s another Facebook example from Jeff

Facebook post from Jeff about a book that arrived. There's more detail about this post and it's example on this page.
In this case, alternative text is a must. The way the post is worded, it doesn’t mention at all what the book is, so without alternative text for someone who is blind, they’ll have no way to know what the book is. This a good example if including alternative text if this was on your website or an in email as well becasue without the alt text, visitors using assistive technology won’t get details on the image and its relationship to the text.

The Facebook auto-generated text is also not helpful: “May be an image of 4 people.” In this instance, it didn’t even try to sort out the words on the book cover (perhaps the font was too stylized).

Jeff provided this alternative text to not only mention the book title, but describe the cover so it’s even clearer for anyone who can’t see the image: “Cover of the book “Space: 1999 – The Vault” by Chris Bentley. Cover shows the logo of “Space:1999″ the TV series with stars Barbara Bain and Martin Landau above the tile and in costume as their characters. Also above the title is an Eagle spacecraft. In faded images are co-stars Barry Morse and Catherine Schell. Across the bottom of the cover is Moonbase Alpha.”

It’s important to note that what Jeff wrote is quite long for alternative text, but with the tools available for Facebook, it worked. You might choose to do similar, or split up more of the information between the actual post and the alternative text. Just remember, whatever you do, you don’t want to let Facebook or Instagram generate the text for you.

A different book promo example

Book promo example with book cover in the center, surrounded by text representing six plot points. The plot points are connected by squiggly lines pointing to the book. More about this within the text on the page.

This type of book promo is wildly popular right now with the cover at the center and plot points/tropes surrounding it and pointing back to the cover. Leaving aside that this is an image with text that has its own concerns for accessibility (which we detail in the “Images of Text” section of the book), the auto-generated alternative text is a disaster: ‘”Teen Secret Agent Security Hack Codename Tracker Hacker Jeff Adams Must Save Dad Intriguing AFunand Adventure” TheStteordinanes Time Field First Too Many Secrets.” Here it’s trying to read the text left to right without consideration for what it actually means.

The alternative text here should be something like: “Tracker Hacker by Jeff Adams features a teen secret agent facing his first time in the field as he must save his dad during a security hack all while keeping too many secrets.”

If you’re curious about what alt text is in place on social media sites without using a screen reader or other assistive technology, you can install the Social Visual Alt Text Chrome Extension. It’ll show you alt text on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.