# WordPress Media Search Discards Its Best Descriptive Field ## Claim WordPress media search indexes filename, title, caption and description and never alt text, so the one field accessibility review reliably forces editors to populate is the field retrieval throws away. <!-- atomicity: 1 idea ✓ --> ## Scope & conditions - Verified against WordPress 7.0.2 source; Trac #22744 is open on it. - Makes accessibility work an unclaimed operational asset — the descriptions exist and nothing uses them for findability. - The practical consequence is duplicate uploads, because an editor who cannot find an asset re-adds it. - Original finding from reading the source, not a claim made by the sponsored article this came from. ## Evidence Verified directly in WordPress 7.0.2 source with Trac #22744 open, prompted by the Infinite Uploads sponsored post on media library scale. ## Links - [[Being Anticipated Beats Being Tolerated - Visible Inclusion Shifts the Burden]] — the reframe this enables — alt text as infrastructure everyone uses, not an accommodation tax - [[An Icon Needs a Visible Label Not Just an Accessible Name]] — the same pattern of a machine-readable description existing without serving the humans who need it - [[3. Resources/MOCs/Accessibility & Disability Inclusion MOC]] — the commercial-case thread — this is accessibility work with a findability payoff nobody is collecting. - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/An Image Nobody Would Miss Should Be Removed and Any Other Image Isn't Decorative]] — constrained by: Adrian Roselli's post gives two yes-or-no tests for an image in narrative content (not icons, not interactive controls): would any reader care if the image were removed, and would the author care if it were replaced with something unwanted.