Have you ever come across a website where the images just don't load, and you're left with empty boxes and a sense of confusion? Or perhaps you use a screen reader, a fantastic assistive technology that reads text aloud for visually impaired users?

In those cases, encountering images without descriptions can be a major barrier to understanding the website's content. This is where alt text for image accessibility comes in.

Let’s get into it and find out how they improve website accessibility.

What is Alt Texts for Images?

It is specifically here that the alt text accessibility for images performs its important task. Alt text (short for alternative text), is a hidden descriptive word put into the HTML code of an image on a webpage.

It’s like an interpreter: it speaks for the image, telling its viewers what the image depicts and how it relates to the broader context.

We will now discuss in-depth the importance of alt text for images on websites and how it can help to improve site accessibility, which is beneficial for everyone.

Opening the Door to Inclusion

Wouldn't it be nice if could see a website selling so many pizzas? It displays photos of their delicious toppings. Unfortunately, images do not have any alt text info. However, for an individual who doesn't have the pictures, it is quite a frustrating experience. They have no idea what types of pizzas the website offers, and it turns useless for them.

In this case, alt text for image accessibility helps. Doing so, the site is not only user-friendly but also inclusive. Screen readers are capable of announcing to visually impaired users information as a list of different toppings including pepperoni, sausage, and veggies. The end result is that people will understand the materials and they will be able to go through he website easily.

The Additional Benefits of Alt Text

Improved Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Alt texts are the additional texts that search engines use to determine the content of your photos. Pictures with keyword-relevant and descriptive alt text may help search engines to better index your site. Thus, boost your site's search engine result rankings, particularly in the image search results.

Enhanced User Experience: The effective speed of serving an image is already important even for the sighted, users on the Internet. Alt text for image accessibility provides context to fill the gap while images are loading which in return gives a smoother user experience.

Clarity in Case Images Don't Load: Broken images might have a break in the visual flow of web pages. An important purpose of alt text is that visitors understand the denoted original message even if the image won't succeed in being loaded.

Crafting Effective Alt Text for Image Accessibility

Be clear and concise: Set as a goal short sentences, which would be highly content-oriented and expressive. Maximally, the approximate number of symbols to use in the alternative text should not exceed 125 characters.

Focus on the essential information: Explain the chief characters and the thing depicted in the image. Also, try to stay away from difficult language or stuff that they cannot understand.

Skip decorative elements: If an image is non-relevant and doesn't add any importance to the content, the alt text can be left as null. In this case, CSS is not more suitable to be used to hide these images but it is better.

Be objective: Stay away from pronouns that have a different meaning for different people like "beautiful" or "funny."

Write for the context: Scan the context of the text as well as the picture to see how relevant the picture is to the text.

Optimize for SEO: Try to fill the alt text accessibility description with appropriate keywords that are used in their natural way. Do not stuff with keywords.

Here's an example to understand the difference

Ineffective Alt Text: "Image of a red apple"

Effective Alt Text: "A wooden table has a red apple on it."

The second example provides a clearer picture of the image, making it more helpful for both screen reader users and search engines.

Conclusion

There are several ways to implement alt text for image accessibility on your website. The specific method depends on the content management system (CMS) you're using. However, the normal process requires these steps:

Identify all images: Locate all the images on your website that require alt text descriptions.

Write clear and concise alt text: For each image, craft a descriptive alt text that follows the best practices mentioned earlier.

Add alt text to your CMS: Most CMS platforms allow you to add alt text directly while uploading or editing images.

Here are some additional tips:

Review your existing content: Go through your website and ensure all images have proper alt text descriptions.

Develop a system: Create a system for writing alt text to ensure consistency across your website.