P: Support for new IPTC accessibility metadata

[angrymongoose]

In October 2021, the IPTC announced new metadata properties to make images more accessible. One particularly interesting one is the AltText property, which is intended to hold the same kind of information that you'd see in the alt attribute of images on the web. Properly-written alt-text is usually a description of the image intended to let partially-sighted or blind users know what is shown in the image. AltText is different from the Title or Description of an image; it's a description of the appearance of an image, rather than a description of what the image represents. So, for example, if you took Robert Capa's famous 'Falling Soldier' image, the title might be "Falling Soldier" or "Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death", the description might be "Photograph by Robert Capa allegedly showing a militiaman shot at the battle of Cerro Muriano, 1936", but the alt-text might be "A black-and-white photograph of a man in civilian clothes with a leather cartridge belt falling backwards, dropping his rifle from his outstretched right hand as he falls." (maybe not the best description; writing good alt-text is tricky).

For users like myself who use Lightroom as part of their website creation workflow, it would be extremely useful to have proper support for AltText in Lightroom. Support for website accessibility through features such as alt-text is seen as increasingly important, and more and more web tools will probably be updated to use text from the AltText property to populate the alt attribute of images in future.

[Chad24479200zhcd]

When is Adobe going to support the new IPTC standard? It was published in November 2021. Without Adobe adopting the new standard, it won't be adopted by the masses. Come on Adobe, what is taking so long? 

[AstroRob]

This support is terribly important to us in our attempts to improve accessibility of image accessibility. If Photoshop would implement these simple tags by default it would be SO much easier for us to get buy-in from our many partners to embrace this much-needed IPTC addition.

[LinhN]

Has there been any word from Adobe on this? Even just a roadmap?

[Chad24479200zhcd]

I was all excited when I saw Bridge now includes the new IPTC accessibility fields, figuring this implementation would be identical accross all Adobe apps. But unfortunately even in the latest version of Lightroom Classic, these fields are missing. At least you can use Bridge, but it would be nice to have native support across all Adobe apps. 

[angrymongoose]

It's interesting that it's already supported in Bridge. That gives me some hope that it might eventually come to Lightroom and Lightroom Classic, although only Adobe knows when that is likely to happen.

[johnrellis]

"Has there been any word from Adobe on this? Even just a roadmap?"

Adobe rarely discloses its feature roadmap. Rarely, it will mark Ideas posted here as "Planned" (at the bottom of the top post). But most ideas that eventually get implemented will never get marked as Planned.

[LinhN]

Oh, that's interesting. I'll have to look into that. Not that anything else outside will read it right now but good to know. And slightly hopeful it's on its way 

[johnrellis]

While waiting for Adobe to implement this (which based on past history, could be a very long time), you could use the Run Any Command export-filter plugin to manage photos' Alt Text within LR:

1. Add photos' Alt Text to a field in LR's Metadata panel you don't otherwise use, e.g. IPTC Job Title or EXIF User Comment.  Customize the Metadata panel's Default tagset to display that field for easy access.

2. Configure the Run Any Command plugin to run the free Exiftool utility as an Export post-processing action that copies the contents of Job Title to the XMP:AltTextAccessibility field.

3. When/if Adobe implements Alt Text within LR, use the Bag-o-Goodies plugin (from the same developer) to copy photos' Job Title to the newly implemented Alt Text field.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Greetings all,

Updates for Adobe Photography products have been released.  The December updates have implemented this feature request.

If you do not see the update in your Creative Cloud Application, you can refresh it by hitting [Ctrl/Cmd]+[Alt/Opt]+[ R ].

Note: It may take up to 24 hours for your update to be available in your Creative Cloud app.

Thank you for your patience.

[angrymongoose]

... And there was loud rejoicing. Thank you!

[johnrellis]

The implementation of this feature is incomplete: You can't search Alt Text and Extended Description with filters or smart collections, as you can with every other IPTC field.  And plugins like Any Filter can't access those fields to provide a workaround. Add your vote to this feature request (which isn't considered a "bug"):

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-implementation-of-alt-text-and-extended-des...