WRITING & EDITING

Edits on Medium:

What Can and Can’t Be Done Post-Publish

V. Bray
1 min readSep 12, 2021

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Laptop open to stock photo website, Unsplash.
Photo by Dele Oke on Unsplash

I was negligent. I admit it. I didn’t add alt text to my photo. Major crime against UX and accessibility, yes. In addition, a publication reached out to invite me to post one of my stories, but they require alt text. Easy edit, right? No.

Before you publish a piece there is an option to email your new post to subscribers. Seems like a good idea so I check that little box every time. However, this option restricts your editing capabilities if you need to add something later like alt text.

Medium tech support was great in answering my question when I couldn’t find an answer in the help section. And they are working to fix the limitations caused by the ‘email to subscribers’ option. In the meantime, if you publish with that option, it’s good to know the following:

  1. alt text cannot be added
  2. images cannot be resized
  3. embedded or unfurling links cannot be added

Has anyone else experienced post-publishing limitations they can share? I’ve learned my lesson. From now on I will add alt text properly from the get go.

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V. Bray

Fiction writer, essayist, and poet. Author of many genres, but always connected to nature somehow. Learn more at www.authorvbray.com