Changed ALT text doesn't not reflect in published posts

Thanks for your kind words and for your question.

When you edit ALT Text values with MLA or some other tool you are updating the _wp_attachment_image_alt entry for the item in the postmeta database table.

The ALT Text content used in a post depends on what you mean by “used”. If the image is part of an [mla_gallery] shortcode or some other gallery-generating shortcode you will see the most recent content from the postmeta database table. The same is true for the Featured Image because the ID of the image is stored as _thumbnail_id in the postmeta table. The ID used to retrieve the Featured Image data as the post is composed for display. is If, however, the image has been directly inserted in the post by “Add Media…” and “Insert into post” then the ALT Text content is whatever was in the database when you performed the insert. The “Insert into post” action adds raw HTML to the body of the post and there is no link back to the Media Library Item.

The MLA “Inserted In” (were-used) information is compiled by scanning the content of every post and looking for the file name; it’s a brute-force approach.

I regret that the current MLA version has no feature that will go back through your published posts/pages, look for inserted images and update them to match the current values in the database. The “Inserted In” column of the Media/Assistant submenu table can help find the posts, but you will have to edit them manually.

You can right-click on the post title and select “open in a new window/tab”. Then, in the Visual tab of the post editor select the image and click the “Edit” (pencil) icon. The “Image Details” will open up with the new ALT Text value. Click “Replace” to get the Replace Image window, and click “Replace” again to update the post with the new ALT Text. Tedious, but it works.

I am marking this topic resolved simply because I have answered the question. I regret that the news isn’t better, but thanks for your interest in the plugin.

A new topic has been started that is closely related to this one:

alt text reconciliation

Given that two topics have been started along similar lines, I will investigate the work required to implement a custom plugin that might accomplish your goal.

It would be very helpful if you could post a few examples of the source text for posts that include alt text you want to process. If you care about captions, examples of those would be especially helpful.

Thanks for any additional details an examples you can supply.