Adding ALT text to article thumbnails on social media

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If you’ve been running your own personal website or a blog for a while, you are likely familiar with the og:image and twitter:image meta tags that let you specify an image that will be shown when you or someone else shares a link to your site or an article on social media.

Did you also know that there are accompanying meta tags that let you provide alt text for this image?

That would be og:image:alt and twitter:image:alt.

Here’s an example from this very page.

<meta 
  property="og:image" 
  content="https://stefanbohacek.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/og-image-alt-twitter-image-alt-social-media-alt-text.png" />
<meta 
  property="og:image:alt" 
  content="A tinted screenshot of a Mastodon post where an article is shared. The featured image thumbnail is overlaid with a tooltip that contains the alt text describing the image." />
<meta 
  property="twitter:image:src" 
  content="https://stefanbohacek.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/og-image-alt-twitter-image-alt-social-media-alt-text.png" />
<meta 
  property="twitter:image:alt" 
  content="A tinted screenshot of a Mastodon post where an article is shared. The featured image thumbnail is overlaid with a tooltip that contains the alt text describing the image." />

Yet another tool to make the web more accessible to everyone!