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Microsoft Edge’s New Feature Looks to Overcome Corner-Cutting Content Managers
By Daphne Wester
Published April 25, 2022
With its newest update, Microsoft Edge seeks to solve one of the easiest to remediate, yet often most overlooked, accessibility issues online − images missing alternative text (alt text).
Microsoft internal research indicates that somewhere around 50% of the images on the internet lack alternative text. Alt text provides text descriptions of what a digital image contains. Alt text can then be processed and read aloud by screen readers, the assistive technology that many people with vision impairments use to access the internet.
Images that lack alt text are inaccessible to screen readers and thus the visually impaired individuals who use them. The deficit exists not because of malice but because many digital content creators are likely unaware of the necessity of alt text to ensure accessibility for all users. Enter Microsoft Edge with an update that aims to fill in that gap. The new Edge [...]