Tony Furnell

You may want to add your vote to this ticket that was started a few weeks ago: Accessibility change in ticket preview pop-up

Brief overview

Please give users the ability to add alt text to pasted inline images in the rich text editor. When a user (either the end user or the helpdesk personnel) pastes an image into a helpdesk ticket, it should be possible for them to add alt text to it, and to come back and edit it if necessary before submitting.

What problem does this solve?

The rich text editor falls way behind in this standard aspect of WCAG compliance. Good accessibility practices start from each user making a conscious decision to adopt them - but if the system doesn't provide the functions to let them do it, we let them down. This change would enable customers with accessibility needs (such as screen reader users) or helpdesk staff with accessibility needs to be properly catered for in ticket communications.

Regularity of problem and business impact

Ticket communications occur many times a day, and without this feature, all screen reader users and others that may make use of alt text are shut out of all visual aspects of the comms. This is a large section of the population when you consider the number of businesses using Zendesk.

Current workaround

I often type text after pasting an image that says “Alt text: [description of what is shown in the image]” but this makes for a cluttered ticket, especially when there is already a lot of text to troubleshoot an issue.

Ideal solution

• When a user paste an image in a ticket or ticket response, a simple button appears overlaid on the image to call attention to the fact that the user can add Alt text. When they click on it (and perhaps additionally when they click on the image and select from a menu), a popup text field appears for them to add alt text. The user can come back later and reopen the alt text to edit it if desired.
• When images are copied and pasted from another source which already has alt text included, this alt text should feed through into the pasted image on the ticket.