HTMLImageElement: longDesc property

The deprecated longDesc property of the HTMLImageElement interface specifies the URL of a text or HTML file which contains a long-form description of the image. This can be used to provide optional added details beyond the short description provided in the title attribute. It reflects the <img> element’s longdesc content attribute.

This attribute is considered obsolete in the HTML spec. It has an uncertain future; authors should use a WAI-ARIA alternative such as aria-describedby or aria-details. You can also encapsulate the image within a link using the <a> element.

Value

A string which may be either an empty string (indicating that no long description is available) or the URL of a file containing a long form description of the image’s contents.

Examples

Consider the following older HTML:

<img
  src="/firefox/mdn-asset-missing.svg"
  alt="Taco Tuesday"
  longdesc="image-descriptions/taco-tuesday.html" />

Here, the longDesc is used to indicate that the user should be able to access a detailed description of the image taco-tuesday.jpg in the HTML file image-descriptions/taco-tuesday.html.

This should be converted into the following HTML:

<a href="image-descriptions/taco-tuesday.html">
  <img src="/firefox/mdn-asset-missing.svg" alt="Taco Tuesday" />
</a>

With that, the image is a link to the HTML file describing the image in more detail.

Specifications

Browser compatibility

See also

• aria-details