Apologies if this has been discussed before, but I couldn’t find anything through the search.
Is it possible to create user-inputted ALT text for each photo instead of using the image Title tag, as they often serve different purposes?
Thanks
Also, is there any way to change the description and title in the structured data for each image?
I haven’t looked into this but wanted to add my comment regarding alt-text. My site hasn’t been up dated to the latest BL 
A quick look at my existing pages and the current BL demo galleries, I don’t see the use of alt-text or 
What is alt-text
This isn’t typically seen by the user. It can be read by accessibility tools in the case of the blind.
The main purpose of alt-text is to describe the image. This comes up in SEO optimizations. It should be a short well-worded description of the image. Good alt-text can give a big boost to getting images shown by search engines.
I would add a caption to the image. This is always shown on the page. It should be within the HTML tag for the image. SEO optimization needs the text surrounding the image to be relevant.
Good alt-text is descriptive, not a list of keywords. Think of it as describing the image to someone that can’t see the image. If you’re familiar with AI image generators, think of the alt-text as the prompt. Be specific with the details. Consider where you’d want this image to show in an image search. What would the user be searching for when you want your image to appear? That’s what you want to write.
Don’t say “photograph of a mountain” it’s too general. Where is this mountain located? If it has a well-known name, use that. Better alt-text would be “photograph of Half Dome at Yosemite at night showing the moon and stars.” Think of it this way, people do not search for images asking for “photo of a mountain.” They’ll say Half Dome. Adding “Yosemite” and “night” is even better. Adding “moon” and “stars” really helps describe the details of the image.
One way to tune your alt-text, do an image search using your alt-text to see what comes up. If you’re not getting similar images, ones you’d not want to be associated with, change the text until you are in the right grouping.
References
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Are there updates or feedback on this? Unless I’m incorrect, the Alt tag is still a very important part of search, which is therefore very important to me and I’m sure most users.
Thanks.
Pangolin uses whatever metadata field you’ve assigned for IMG alt attribute, with image filename being a fallback when empty. This is assigned in your album template:
