Expand Alt Text Character Limit and Allowed Characters

[COSA_PIO]

Hello, Alt Text is meant to describe an image or graphic. Your platform does not allow the use of punctuation and cuts of descriptions at 160 characters. That is not enough, and many things cannot be conveyed in such limited space nor in such a limited capacity. If the image contains words, it's important that readers are able to use their adaptive technology to read the words within the graphic or image, something that can only be achieved through the use of Alt Text. Very often, you need to use quotes or commas or other punctuation that currently is not allowed in your system. Please update your system!

[Kyle_R]

Thank you for your feedback. We're opening this up to gather additional feedback from users and hear more examples on how people would like us to improve the alt text.

[ButlerC]

I completely agree. Please find a way to fix this. I struggle with alt-text every time I add an image to my newsletters and as I send newsletters weekly, that's a lot of wasted time spent on being creative about how to write alt-text. Nowhere else am I limited on what punctuation to use. Furthermore, I've reported this issue twice and I have yet to see a fix. I'd love to know why we're limited on what characters we can use. I honestly have not been able to write effective alt-text with these limitations and our disabled audience deserves better.

[ButlerC]

I know posts like this exist but I really want to re-emphasize the issue of alt-text character limitations. I struggle writing alt-text on this website every time I add a picture because of the characters I'm not able to use. I've been reporting this issue for over a year and no one's been able to answer why those limitations even exist. We need a better experience in order to write effective alt-text for our disabled community. It's also such a waste of time when I need to edit my alt-text after I've already spent time crafting the perfect language. What I end up with is a sentence that makes little sense and isn't grammatically correct because I can't even use a comma. Please take a look at this and fix it. It's frustrating for all users and there's no reason for this to even be an issue.

[Frankie_P]

Hi everyone,

The good news is users have been having an easier time with adding alt text within our cross-platform editor insert image window. In fact users can type over 1,000 characters and special characters. The limitation being described in this thread only seems to be a limitation of editing the image description within the Library tab. Does adding your alt text within your email campaign help fit your needs?

[ScottG626]

Hey Frankie,

I tried adding the Alt Text within the email campaign but dont see the increased limit (1000 char.) you are describing in your comment above. Additionally, on this page ( https://knowledgebase.constantcontact.com/articles/KnowledgeBase/5815-edit-an-image-description?lang... ) it states that the limit is also 256 characters. The location you are refering to, "cross-platform editor insert image window" is the one pictured second in the link I provided, correct? If thats not the cross-platform editor insert image window, where would I find that?

[Caitlin_M]

Hello @ScottG626. Thank you for pointing that out. We'll bring this up with our Knowledge Base team. 

Your campaign is using our third-generation editor which has a 256-character limit for alt text. We may be able to convert this campaign to our cross-platform editor so you can have access to the expanded character limit. Please contact our Support team who can submit a request to our upper level of support. You can also select a new template by clicking Create on the campaign page as the picker page includes templates using that new editor.

[Caitlin_M]

At this time, there are no plans to introduce any additional allowed characters when inserting alt text. The description can be up to 256 characters long, but can't contain special characters like / \ ; : * ? " | , < >