Write the Docs Newsletter – February 2026

2026-02-05T00:00:00+00:00

Welcome to the first newsletter of 2026! I hope your year is off to a good start, full of cooperative colleagues, generous deadlines, and bug-free docs sites. What more could you want?

The Portland conference will be here before you know it, so get your tickets while you can. If you need assistance in attending, applications for opportunity grants close this Thursday, so apply now.

We’re still looking for someone to join the newsletter team, so if you’re interested, reach out to @Aaron Collier in Slack.

This month’s newsletter has articles on recommendations for good alt text, whether LLMs can be useful even if there’s a bubble around AI, and what it means to be a “full-stack” documentarian. Enjoy!

Style guidance for alt text

Alternative text (alt text) can be difficult to write well. One strategy is to duplicate image captions. While this satisfies the recommendation that “every image should have some alt text,” many documentarians want more considered alt text.

Effective alt text should communicate essential visual information of an image in context. You may want to include the purpose of the image rather than attempting to describe every detail. Alt text should be limited to one or two sentences (thorough but concise) and focused on the information the image is meant to communicate. Do not include decorative details nor text that appears in the documentation, itself.

Because screen readers already announce images, do not start alt text with a phrase such as “image of”. However, context-specific terms such as “screenshot of” or “graph of” can be appropriate if they add meaning.

To help you develop effective alt text, consider how you would explain the image verbally to someone over the phone. Doing this can help you focus on what matters to a visually-impaired user.

There are several authoritative standards with guidelines for writing alt text. Also, consider accessibility resources about screen readers. Resources from W3C/WAI, WCAG, and government agencies (such as UK accessibility content, US government 508 guidelines, or your country’s governmental accessibility agency) are usually reliable references. These references are useful both for learning best practices and for resolving concerns about accessibility requirements:

See more Write the Docs resources about accessibility and inclusivity and style guides.

Can AI be both a bubble and useful?

According to a recent discussion in the #ai channel, yes! The discussion was prompted by an article: The Rise of AI Denialism.

Many remarked on the bubble aspect – especially the over-hyped public perception. Current AI systems are viewed as heavily subsidized and not economically sustainable at real operating costs. Once venture capital, government incentives, or free tiers disappear, AI tools may become prohibitively expensive or vanish. Considerable resources (especially water and electricity) are used to maintain data centers. The significant need for hardware affects availability for consumers and business. At some point, the pushback may be considerable.

AI is reshaping how knowledge work gets done and is unlikely to disappear even if funding collapses or free tools vanish. Those in a position to hire mentioned the need for applicants to have at least some exposure to generative AI. One raised concerns about how to evaluate potential hires and their use of AI. Another expressed concern about “AI denialists” having problems getting hired.

But many also shared how it has affected them – the useful aspects and how it has changed their work already. They see it as a useful tool rather than a replacement. A July 2025 WTD Newsletter article focused on how documentarians use AI or LLMs.

There was a concern about the “future” of AI in the sense that “public” AI has evolved so quickly that future improvement may be limited. Few had concerns about replacing humans other than having some (especially entry-level) jobs disappear. AI affects certain types of jobs (such as creative, UX/UI, translation, and perhaps some programming jobs). The expectation was that other AI-related jobs will evolve. For example, some may position themselves to be the in-house AI experts as the humans who prompt output and review provided content.

Therefore, the general consensus was when the AI bubble bursts, AI will remain as a limited, expensive, and practical tool to improve documentarians’ work rather than as a replacement for their work.

See more Write the Docs resources about AI and LLMs.

Defining a full-stack documentarian

Someone noted in the #career-advice channel that they had run into the term “full-stack” to describe a role and wondered what it meant and whether it was something worth pursuing. Different people had different personal definitions, though there were some common themes.

Some focused on the technical side of docs, meaning someone who is into tooling, creating pipelines, and creating docs sites and still writes docs themselves – as opposed to a docs engineer focused exclusively on the site itself. This option seemed to be focused on coding skills. The term “full-stack” was brought over from full-stack developers, which lent itself to a more technical way of looking at it. One person noted they referred to themselves this way to mean they covered all of the given developer stack, from backend APIs to the UI.

Others thought of it as unrelated to code, but encompassing all of the possible other tasks that documentarians could be involved in: technical writing, content designing, and UX writing. And also different kinds of docs, from API references to tutorials to UX strings.

One person noted an aversion to the term. To them, the idea of a “full-stack” documentarian implied a generalist, someone who can do a little of a lot of things but isn’t an expert in any. This brought up concerns that such generalists would necessarily be slower at any given task than a specialist with dedicated expertise. Generalists were seen as more useful at smaller companies that don’t have enough people to specialize.

The consensus seemed to be that it could mean different things to different people, but the most important part was being able to promote your skills. If you feel comfortable using the term to describe yourself and it resonates with the people you talk to, use it! It’s important to show people the value you bring.

See more Write the Docs resources about career growth.

Write the Docs resources

Write the Docs offers lots of valuable resources related to documentation. See all of the Write the Docs learning resources. To discuss any of these ideas or others related to documentation, join the conversation in the Write the Docs Slack community in one of the many channels.

Events coming up

6 Feb, 08:30 EST (US East Coast Virtual): Social Hour for Documentarians
10 Feb, 19:00 MST (Calgary, Canada): Finding documentation work in challenging times
10 Feb, 18:30 PST (San Francisco, USA): Practical AI strategies for documentation teams – Sponsored by Mintlify
13 Feb, 12:00 AEDT (Australia): Onboarding for two: how I accidentally made my AI smarter by onboarding a human
18 Feb, 17:00 CST (Austin, USA): Beyond Networking: Building a Docs Community for Continuous Growth & Resiliency
20 Feb, 08:30 EST (US East Coast Virtual): Write the Docs East Coast Virtual Meetup
20 Feb, 12:00 PST (Portland, USA): Write the Docs PDX - Casual Meetup
25 Feb, 18:00 CET (Barcelona, Spain): AI & Tech Writing - Share Your Experience!
6 Mar, 08:30 EST (US East Coast Virtual): Write the Docs East Coast Virtual Meetup