Alt text (alternative text) describes an image on a web page. It lives in the HTML code and is not usually visible on the page itself. But what’s so important about ? And how can you use it to improve SEO and user experience? In this guide, you’ll learn: Millions of people are visually-impaired, and many use screen readers to consume online content. These work by converting on-screen content, including images, to audio. for Images without cause problems for screen readers because there’s no way to communicate the content of the image to the user.
Usually they skip over
These images, or worse, read out long and unhelpful image filenames. Having that reads “bath and candle” isn’t useful for visually-impaired readers executive email list because it’s information they don’t need to know. It would be better to have the screen reader ignore it completely. But, here’s an important point… If an image doesn’t require , best practice is to add an empty alt attribute. This is because some screen readers read out filenames in the absence of an alt attribute, whereas most will skip those with empty ones. Alt text isn’t rocket science. Follow these five best practices, and you should be good. Be concise. Lengthy is annoying for those using screen readers.
Use as few words as possible
Use the longdesc attribute if a long description is necessary. Be accurate. Focus on describing the image. Avoid keyword stuffing. This is not a place to shoehorn Email Lists keywords. Avoid stating that it’s an image. There’s no need to include “Image of…” or “Picture of…” in descriptions. Both Google and screen readers can work that out for themselves. Avoid redundancy. Don’t repeat information that already exists within Alt Text for the context of the image. For example, if you have a photo of Steve Jobs and the text directly below the image reads “Steve Jobs,” there’s no need to add this description to the alt tag. Google should understand that the caption is effectively the . You should also remember to add to form buttons. Otherwise, screen readers might pass over them and some visitors won’t be able to interact with your website.