I haven't bought anything from GOG in quite some time. Partly because I don't even know what they want to sell me. For some weird reason their emails are full of pictures (I don't see them, thanks to Thunderbird) and they don't include alt text. If THEY can't be bothered to do that, I can't be bothered to allow remote content, and buy my stuff elsewhere.

I told support about this, too. Didn't expect anything to happen, and so it was.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt_attribute

Well I can't help you with GOG's emails not including alt text, but I wanted to ask you, seeing as you benefit greatly from alt text: can you provide me an example of alt text that effectively does its job at helping you read the content?

The reason I ask this is because sometimes I get asked to enter alt text, like say on BlueSky, but I'm unsure if I should be verbose or succinct. Describe as much as I can, or just enough to get an idea? I'd like to be better about this.

For web design the general recommendation is that it be meaningful to a screen reader / what would you like to show in the event the image doesn't load. In general keep it "brief but meaningful", eg, "Sunset over a lake". However, if you were showing a image of a chart of something, then it's fine to go into detail, eg, alt = "Bar chart of monthly sales figures for the past year, with the highest sales in December" will mean a lot more to someone who can't see the chart than just "Bar chart". Avoid using "Image of" or "Picture of" before the description as screen-readers will include that information and it will end up a redundant "Image : Image of a sunset over a lake" instead of "Image: Sunset over a lake".

You can leave it blank for "decorative" images that don't convey any meaning (images used as bullet points, horizontal lines, etc). When blanking it, use alt = "" as it then gets ignored by screen readers, whereas if you leave the alt tag out altogether, many screen readers will attempt to read the image filename (which would be more confusing than them skipping over it). Include descriptions on "decorative" images used as links though, eg, if you used an image of a green arrow pointing right on a Next Page link, instead of putting alt = "Green Arrow" or leaving it blank, you'd then put alt = "Next Page".

Besides all the extremely good advice AB2012 has given, I find it helpful to reason about "what is the meaning I get from this image", and write that down. So, don't write what the image "shows", but write what it "means", if you get that distinction.

(Not "mountain landscape showing green meadows, blue skies and a family wearing lederhosen and carrying hiking poles", but "the Austrian alps are an inviting hiking destination". Not "bar chart", but "sales have gone up over the last 12 months at a roughly linear rate, from 300 in January to a peak of 450 in December". Also, generally, when an image shows text (e.g. memes), just putting that text as the alt text is better than describing what the image shows; Not "The American hip hop artist Xzibit smiling with white text overlaid at the top and the bottom of the image, and the entire image repeated recursively", but "Yo dawg, I heard you like memes, so I put a meme inside yo meme".)

I'd be happy if the alt text told me the name of the game(s) they want to notify me about. If it's only one, the subject line of the email is enough, obviously. Most times.

I'm not even going to demand additional information like a rough genre estimate. It's more about some dang courtesy, really.

Yes, that's my usual GOG newsletter experience too. ;-)

I have Thunderbird Email set to block external images and scripts, because I'm afraid of trackers and malware. And it does its job well. But without alternative texts there isn't much left of GOGs emails and you are left guessing... (One can usually find some game titles hidden in link urls though.) Sometimes I wonder if GOG does hide the game titles on purpose? Maybe it is to keep the keyword count low and avoid spam filters?


For anyone concerned: When blocking external images, the latest GOG newsletter looks like this:

So an effective format would be one or more of the following: The following is an impartial list of games currently on discount: [Game Title A, B, C], for more titles and sales information, please visit the GameSieve page! https://gamesieve.com/

Alternate 2: Featured games on sale are: [Game A, B, C], for more sales information, please click though or visit GOG.

Something like that, yeah?

Thanks for the detailed explanations about how to best use the alt text. I really appreciate it.