Old Geocities page on 1998 taught me alt text matters

Found this ancient Geocities site for a cat fan club from 1998. The images were all broken but the alt text was so detailed I could still picture each cat. Someone named 'Webmaster Dave' wrote paragraphs describing every photo. After that I started writing alt text for all my own old site archives. Anybody else find old pages that made you change how you code now?

3 comments

3 Comments

palmer.ryan18d ago

Oh great, so now I need to thank some dead HTML for teaching me basic decency. I bet Webmaster Dave was the same guy who left mile-long comments on every recipe site too. But honestly, broken image tags are the internet's way of saying "time to actually describe this cat, you lazy developer.

young.emma18d ago

Man, you know what, I actually used to roll my eyes at alt text too. I figured it was just some nerdy checkbox for people who overthink everything. But then I had a customer with a screen reader trying to order parts on my shop's website and I realized I'd made a whole catalog of "image.jpg" with zero descriptions. Felt like a total jerk when they told me they couldn't tell which brake pads were which. So yeah, Webmaster Dave might have been annoying with his recipe comments, but he was onto something. That extra sentence really does make the difference between helping someone out and just assuming they'll figure it out.

brians2718d ago

That alt text thing goes way beyond just web coding honestly. Same pattern shows up everywhere in real life. People leave vague notes or skip details then wonder why nobody gets what they meant. I've seen it at work with project instructions, at the store with product labels that say nothing useful. Webmaster Dave just understood that putting in the extra effort upfront saves everyone headaches later. Basic decency like that guy said but also just practical common sense. Broken images or missing info are the same problem - someone assumed everybody would just "know" what they meant.