files/en-us/web/api/htmlimageelement/longdesc/index.md
{{APIRef("HTML DOM")}}{{deprecated_header}}
The deprecated longDesc property of the {{domxref("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 `` element's longdesc content attribute.
This attribute is considered obsolete in the HTML spec. It has an uncertain future; authors should use a {{glossary("WAI")}}-{{glossary("ARIA")}} alternative such as aria-describedby or aria-details. You can also encapsulate the image within a link using the {{HTMLElement("a")}} element.
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.
Consider the following older 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">
</a>
With that, the image is a link to the HTML file describing the image in more detail.
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