Alt text for images

What is alt text?

In the Edlio admin site you'll see a button labeled Alt on media. "Alt" is short for alternative text. Sometimes you'll hear people refer to it as an alt tag or alt attribute.

The alt text provides some text as an alternative version of an image, video or other media.

Why is alt text important?

People with visual impairments may not be able to see your website clearly enough to understand the content. Thankfully they can use a screen reader to convert the site into audio. This allows them to listen to the information on the pages and navigate through the site auditorily.

Unfortunately, screen readers cannot read images, videos and other media. Instead the screen reader gives the listener the alternative text version of the media. If there is no alt text provided for an image the screen reader cannot tell the listener what the image is about.

In other words, providing alt text improves the accessibility of your website.

To make sure your website content is accessible, every image uploaded to CMS should have alt text describing the image. If the image is decorative the alt text should be empty instead.

What should the alt text be?

Alt text is best when it succinctly describes the content and function of the image.

Guidelines

Keep it short and simple. It probably doesn't need to be more than one sentence.
When thinking about what to write, ask yourself: why is the image is being used and what message does it convey?
If the image is a link, make sure the alt text for the image describes the function of the link.
If the image is strictly decorative then the alt text should be empty.
There is no need to say "Photo of ..." or "Image of ...."

Add alt text to your Edlio website

Many areas in Edlio Admin Site have an easily-recognized Alt button over a photo, image or video. Click the Alt button to give the media an alternative text.

Please see the different locations in the admin site where you can use this functionality below.