Image alt text isn't included in pull request emails

[backwardok]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Pull Requests

Body

Issue

When an email goes out related to a pull request (PR), even if the images have alt text set, the email will include a link to the image with the label <filename> (view on web) and not include the image alt text. This is true for both images that are included as part of the PR description and images that are included in comments on PRs. This means that anyone who's using a screen reader would need to go to the PR in order to hear the alt text.

Example

I recently had a pull request where I included before and after screenshots in a table.

How it looks in the pull request on the web:

How it was coded in markdown:

| Before | After |
|--------|--------|
| <img width="511" height="183" alt="Fieldset highlighted from Chrome DevTools showing additional space below the last checkbox" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/072fdf27-7d47-451a-9b9d-61e2360013a3" /> | <img width="504" height="175" alt="Same fieldset with the highlight of the fieldset tight to the end of the checkbox" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/45dd7b08-a4cf-4a53-be52-a6e1119831e1" /> | 

How it looks in the email:

Possible solutions

When alt text is present, it's more accessible to include the alt text in the link text so it's clearer what the link goes to and also clarifies what the image is for anyone who can't see the image.

For example, the link text could be Image: <alt> (view on web). For my example, that would look something like Image: Fieldset highlighted from Chrome DevTools showing additional space below the last checkbox (view on web).

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[KhyFee]

This is a classic email multiparts vs HTML sanitizer issue: PR notification emails often strip or replace rich image markup, and many clients ignore alt on remote images for privacy reasons.

Workarounds that help now:

1. Put the important caption in the surrounding markdown text, not only in alt (email will include body text even when images are blocked).
2. Prefer plain-text diffs for accessibility reviews where alt is the point of the change.
3. For design review, attach images as files with a caption in the comment body rather than relying on inline previews alone.

Worth tracking as a product bug if alt is deliberately dropped from the HTML MIME part — Support with a minimal PR comment SVG/HTML example is useful.

[backwardok]

Given that the link text includes the words "(view on web)", that seems like something that Github specifically has added, which means they should be able to replace the content with the alt text provided when present. This seems like a Github email notification bug.

[backwardok]

Looks like this got fixed sometime in the last month and follows what I had suggested as a fix.

[cehfisher]

Hi @backwardok – thank you for confirming the fix! 🚀