Bug 169956 - Accessibility: Pictures' Alternative text and Description metadata is not shown in placeholder frame when images disabled in View
Summary: Accessibility: Pictures' Alternative text and Description metadata is not sho...
Status: UNCONFIRMED
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
Inherited From OOo
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: accessibility
Depends on:
Blocks: a11y, Accessibility
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2025-12-13 05:39 UTC by Jeff Fortin Tam
Modified: 2025-12-13 15:15 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
Sample file (45.39 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text)
2025-12-13 05:39 UTC, Jeff Fortin Tam
Details
Demonstration video (1.48 MB, video/mp4)
2025-12-13 05:41 UTC, Jeff Fortin Tam
Details

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Description Jeff Fortin Tam 2025-12-13 05:39:44 UTC
Created attachment 204609 [details]
Sample file

To reproduce:

1. Open the attached sample file
2. Go to the View menu and disable "Images and Charts"

Then observe that the image's placeholder frame now only shows the frame and a little icon, but does not show the image's Alt text nor its Description metadata.

For accessibility review purposes, and also for performance reasons for folks like me who edit very long documents with large images, it would be great if we could see those alt text / descriptions as placeholder text inside the image frames.
Comment 1 Jeff Fortin Tam 2025-12-13 05:41:55 UTC
Created attachment 204610 [details]
Demonstration video

As observed on:

Version: 25.8.3.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 8ca8d55c161d602844f5428fa4b58097424e324e
CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 6.17; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: en-US (en_US.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Flatpak
Comment 2 rram 2025-12-13 05:51:03 UTC
Hi Jeff Fortin Tam,

This is a feature request, not really a bug, but I can confirm that this “no description” behavior is consistent with the Windows Live and alpha versions of LibreOffice.

Version: 25.8.3.2 (X86_64)
Build ID: 8ca8d55c161d602844f5428fa4b58097424e324e
CPU threads: 8; OS: Windows 10 X86_64 (build 19045); UI render: Skia/Vulkan; VCL: win
Locale: en-US (en_US); UI: en-US
Calc: CL threaded

Version: 26.2.0.0.alpha1+ (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 620(Build:0)
CPU threads: 8; OS: Windows 10 X86_64 (build 19045); UI render: Skia/Vulkan; VCL: win
Locale: en-US (en_US); UI: en-US
Calc: CL threaded
Comment 3 V Stuart Foote 2025-12-13 15:15:32 UTC
+1

When the View -> 'Images and Charts' is toggled and just the wire frame place holder is shown, we currently expose a small icon in the upper left corner--looks to be the lc_insertgraphic.png for current icon theme as user set in Appearance.

So we already respond in UI to the view mode change. 

Would think showing the image Name (thought we did at one point), but also as suggested the image's 'Text alternative' and 'Description' as assigned (and available via context menu -> Properties).

It would improve a11y of documents, but would also improve scrolling performance.

@Michael, this seems reasonable AT me.