Image Alt Text not shown in DXA Website

Question

I have added alternate text metadata on images in the CMS for an out-of-the-box DXA 1.0 (.NET) website and republished the pages, but the alt text is not showing. Where is this data getting lost?

Answer 1

There is a mismatch between the schema XML field name (altText), and the Image.AlternateText property semantic mapping.

The non-code way to fix this is to update the XML field name to be alternateText, which will mean there is an automatic mapping to the AlternateText property. However be aware that renaming a schema field will remove any existing metadata in components using that schema.

This can also be fixed in code, by simply adding an appropriate mapping to the Image.AlternateText property:

[SemanticProperty("s:name")]
[SemanticProperty("altText")]
public string AlternateText { get; set; }