Picture with no description

A page shows a picture and says nothing of it for a reader who can’t see it: the alt of its tag is empty or missing.

What you’ll see

note  Picture with no description: `photo-1.jpg`
  Describe it in the brackets, or mark it decorative.
  More: https://statac.dev/e/undescribed-picture/

In the terminal the message also names the file and line where there is one, and marks the exact text.

Why Statac says so

A reader using a screen reader, or whose picture didn’t arrive, is given a picture’s description in its place. With none, some hear the file’s name read out and others nothing at all, and what the picture was there to say is lost to them. That is part of the page Statac built, so it says so. It is a note, and nothing is left out of the site.

Statac says so for:

• a picture in Markdown with empty brackets, ![](photo-1.jpg), that no file beside it describes
• a picture a template or snippet shows with page.photo, where the template reads the picture’s alt and it has none
• an <img> in the writing with no alt at all

A picture marked as decoration is never mentioned.

How to fix it

Say what the picture shows, in a few words, as you would to someone on the phone.

In Markdown, write it in the brackets: ![A gradient from blue to orange](photo-1.jpg).

For any picture under content/, you can write it once in a file beside the picture, named after it with .yaml on the end. Markdown with empty brackets and page.photo both use it. In photo-1.jpg.yaml:

alt: A gradient from blue to orange

A picture that is only decoration, such as a flourish between sections, needs no description. Say so in the same file, and readers who can’t see it are told nothing of it:

decorative: true

A template or snippet says the same with page.photo("photo-1.jpg", decorative=true), and an <img> of your own with alt="".

Once you have understood it, the note can be quietened by name.

Example

In content/post-1.md:

![](photo-1.jpg)

Written ![A gradient from blue to orange](photo-1.jpg), the note goes.

In statac.yaml, to stop it being shown:

quiet: [undescribed-picture]

Its name

Name	undescribed-picture
In the terminal	statac explain undescribed-picture
To stop showing it	quiet: [undescribed-picture] in statac.yaml, once you have understood it. Statac still counts it.