Generate alt text in the page editor

Updated

While you edit a page or post, the Dirigible theme's Accessibility panel lists images with no alt text, and images whose alt text is just a file name such as IMG_1234.jpg. With Dirigible AI and an OpenRouter key on the site, each of those images gets a Generate alt text button.

Generate alt text for an image on the page

  1. In the page editor, open the sidebar and the Accessibility panel. It's also in the pre-publish check.
  2. Find the image and click Generate alt text. A suggested description appears under it.
  3. Read it, and edit the wording if you want. The AI can get things wrong, and you know what the image is for on this page.
  4. Click Use. The description goes on the image in the page, and the suggestion leaves the list.
  5. Save or update the page as usual.

Try again asks for another suggestion; Cancel closes it. Nothing changes on the page until you click Use.

When you're allowed to edit that image in the Media Library, Use also saves the description there, so other pages that show the same image pick it up. Text you used exactly as suggested is marked Generated on the AI Alt Text screen; text you edited first is marked Manual.

Who can use it

Anyone who can upload files and edit the page: Administrators, Editors and Authors. Contributors don't see the button.

Each person can generate up to 50 suggestions a day. When someone reaches that, the button says so, and they can write the alt text themselves or try again the next day. The panel shows how many are left once there are 10 or fewer.

It uses the site's OpenRouter key and the Model set for automatic alt text on the AI Alt Text screen. Without a key on the site, the button doesn't appear, and the panel's Add alt text opens the image's alt text field instead.

Tips

  • Logos need the organisation's name ("Acme logo"), which the AI may not know. Write those yourself.
  • An image that adds nothing to the page, like a pattern, doesn't need a description: use It's decorative in the Accessibility panel instead.
  • For older images across the whole site, Generate missing alt text on the AI Alt Text screen works faster.

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