ALT Text

ALT text or alternative text is meant to provide alternative or surrogate text mainly when the image is not being displayed. As many web designer do mistake in not using it at all. And the other mistake is that giving a wrong description for the image without thinking that what work the image was doing on the page. And this results in bad to worst for the image identity.

Anyone who is well-known with web accessibility knows that images require alternative or ALT text assigned to it. The alternative text assigned to the images helps the screen readers to understand the images. Observe ALT text can be seen just by mousing over the image and looking at the yellow tool tip that appears.

Websites tend to diverge in how they use ALT text to logos. a number of them say, SEO Company name or Company name logo and many describe the function of the image usually by linking back to the homepage, as ALT text should always describe the content for the image so the first example that is alt="Company name As SEO India ", is most likely the best. And if the logo is a link back to the homepage then this can be efficiently communicated through the title tag.The alt characteristic is meant as an alternative or substitute to the image.

The important feature of ALT text is that keep it as short as possible.

• ALT means ALTernative
• Leave away the image blank for decorative images
• Repeat the text in full if an image contains text,
• Charts and graphs speaks a thousand words
• For custom bullets use CSS

Importance of ALT Text
One of the main problems on the Web today is the lack of alternative text for graphics and images. When these technologies come across images without alt text; they are unable to communicate their meaning.
When a screen reader comes across an image with no alt attribute, there is a pair of things that could happen:
1. May skip the image as if it were not even on the page.
2. The screen reader may find little text that is related with the image such as the file name and read that instead.

This shows that Alt text play a vital role in designing and decorating any website.