Search code examples
htmlaccessibilityscreen-readersaltascii-art

Alt attribute for ASCII art in HTML?

This is a very (very) specific question, but would it be appropriate to use the alt attribute for a pre tag when using that to show ASCII art? It's essentially like an image (which wouldn't be intelligible using a screen reader), so using alt makes sense.

<pre alt="A cute little blob creature">༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ</pre>

Would is be read by a screen reader? Would this be appropriate or good form?

(I could imagine other situations where this might arise, like using a typographical object to denote a particular action, such as a "home" link.)

Solution

  • The aria-label attribute exists for this purpose.

    <pre aria-label="A cute little blob creature">༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ</pre>

    For more information, check out this MDN article on it.