Start a new topic

“Alt-Text”/Text Description/Transcript for Audio Attachments

Motivation: audio content is not always particularly easy to view.

  • maybe you did not bring your headphones and you are on a train
  • maybe you are unable to experience audio content just in general and are now excluded from an entire category of posting
  • maybe you listened to the audio file but didn’t understand any of the words
  • maybe you just don’t want to or have the time to sit there listening for thirty seconds
…but you would still like to know the gist of the post.


Usually, this would be solved by use of closed captions/timed text, but they are rather time-consuming to produce, and typically require special tooling. I think that’s too much to ask.


This is a proposal to compromise and add an “alt-text” field to audio attachments (hopefully multiline too for this one):

  • some audio posts consist entirely of someone saying words. you could take the time to transcribe it to text and put it in there. No additional timing metadata like for captions, just the text. I think that’s not too big of an ask
  • some audio posts are a short sound effect or a silly edit of existing music. you could describe what it is to give context for whatever additional commentary/replies are on the post
  • a text description may be less effective for regular music, but you could still make an effort to describe what is going on
  • if you have singing, you can also put the lyrics in there
  • etc…

While this may not be a web platform feature, having a little “description” disclosure box in audio attachments would be very nice I think. ok that is all


113 people like this idea

I have audio processing disorder and this would help me a lot!

6 people like this
I would really appreciate this, oftentimes I like to see the captions of audio before I actually play the audio!

4 people like this
i have received a counterpoint on cohost: that maybe this kind of thing would be better served in the post body itself, and you’d also have full access to markdown formatting and all that. and yeah i agree actually. however!!!!! the value of having it be a dedicated field is also to present a dedicated affordance for it. like, you *can* put it in the post body in a
or something, but no one will remember to do that. an empty text field is much more effective. i dunno… if people prefer using the post body, they could just put “see post body” in there, i guess? maybe there is an overall better design though. i don’t know what it would be. perhaps pvp is the answer… this cohost feature request forum post with 10 minutes of thinking about it and no ux research to back it up shall now be open for takedowns by better designs. i uhhh also can’t seem to find much(any?) research about this specific scenario regardless…

2 people like this
lmao i didn’t know you could post html here. uhhh sorry about the formatting

2 people like this
I like the idea of it being a dedicated field for two reasons:
  • It reminds people that this is a thing you can do.
  • If there is specific formatting that would make best practices for audio transcription easier/automatic, they could be part of the field's default formatting rather than something users have to add themselves in the post body.


4 people like this
Good idea, should be implemented!

1 person likes this

god absolutely supporting this one. 


1 person likes this

we understand the benefits of having a separate UI affordance to encourage users to provide a description of uploaded audio and we're taking this into consideration. given that, as OP said, this is not an existing web platform feature, it requires serious UX considerations and is not by any means a quick add. for now, we suggest adding that to the post body, either with a details tag or as a "read more"


2 people like this
Login or Signup to post a comment