What Is Good Alt Text
Accessibility is important for every website. One of the foundations of great website accessibility is alt text. Alternative text (alt text) is a textual description of an image. It’s purpose to describe the image. There are multiple purposes for alt text – search engine, blind users, and sighted users when images don’t load.
What is good alt text? There’s a great WebAIM article that explains it. The thing is, there isn’t just one type of image. There are many different types of images, each describes its purpose.
- photo
- avatar
- portrait
- selfie
- sketch
- painting
- landscape
- hero
- screenshot
- computer rendering
Because there are so many, doesn’t it make sense to include that in the alt text? For example photo of firstname lastname
has a different meaning than selfie of firstname lastname
. What if the image what a photo of a person on their social media profile? Would “Avatar of username” be good alt text? Would Avatar of firstname lastname
be better?