Alt Text
What is Alt Text?
Alt text is a written description of visual elements like pictures, graphs, or charts. This allows devices called screen readers, which read computer files and websites aloud to blind users, to describe images as well.
How do we add alt text to images?
How do we write “good” alt text?
- Be precise
- Be as concise as possible
- Mark images that are strictly aesthetic as "decorative" (like the yellow page divider below)
- Align with learning outcomes
A Picture is Worth... 120 Characters?
The Accessibility Checker will flag images with alt descriptions longer than 120 characters. While we want to describe as concisely as possible, sometimes we need more than 120 characters. In these cases, consider the Accessibility Checker error message as a suggestion and not a mandate to change.
Consider the example below. The statistics and quotes are part of this graphic, so a screen reader will not detect the information contained within the image without us providing alt text. We exceed 120 characters when we include the necessary information in the alt text box.
Immersive Reader - use as simple screen reader