Alt Text - What is it, why is it important, and how do I use it?

Have you heard of alt text?

You may have seen our Instagram story, stating that we are adding alt text to all our social media posts. We had a few replies asking some questions about this, so we thought we would pull together a little resource for all the fabulous content creators and clients in our community on how to use alt text to make your online space as accessible as possible.

Alt text (short for alternative text) describes the function or appearance of an image on a page. Alt text can be read aloud by screen readers, can appear in place of an image which has failed to load, and is indexed by search engines to understand the content of your page.

Let’s start with that first point;

Alt text is read aloud by screen readers. What is a screen reader and who might use one?

A screen reader is a piece of specialised software that converts digital text into spoken language or Braille. Screen readers are commonly used as an accessibility tool by people who are blind or have low vision, along with some people with cognitive impairments, people who are deaf or hard of hearing, people with motor disabilities, people with lower literacy, non-native speakers or anybody who prefers to listen to content in place of or in addition to visually reading. So, the usage of screen readers might be more common than you thought.

Alt text is text that can be read aloud by a screen reader to describe an image featured in your content. So, for example, someone using a screen reader might be able to read your instagram caption, but they won’t necessarily know what the image shows, and it’s often the image that ‘does the talking’ on social media.

So; how do we add alt text to make sure everyone can access the content we put out?

First of all, figure out how to write good alt text before contemplating adding it in. The goal of alt text is to describe, as specifically as possible, the content of the image, including the photo or graphic itself, as well as any text or call-to-action buttons shown.

Here are our five top tips for writing great alt text.

1. Keep it (relatively) short but rich. Ideally alt text will be less than 125 characters; some screen readers cut off alt text around that mark, and while some don’t, keeping your characters below that point is the safest option and a good habit to get into.

2. Include your keywords. If you’re trying to SEO-optimise your content, alt text provides you another opportunity to include your target keyword on a page, which helps search engines to realise that your content is relevant to a particular search or question. BUT; avoid keyword stuffing. If you enter too many or repetitive key words, Google gets angry and can hide your content, thinking that you’re doing what is known in the biz as ‘keyword stuffing.’ Focus on writing descriptive alt text that provides context to the image and, if appropriate, include one keyword.

3. Don't waste precious alt text characters writing ‘the image shows’ or ‘a picture of’ or ‘in this image is…’ because anyone using alt text will already know there’s an image.

4. Don’t forget to mention any form buttons or text used overlaid on an image. For example, if your image has a ‘sign up’ button on it, mention that. If there’s text of any description, try to include it in the alt text. If alt text space doesn’t allow for this, ask yourself whether the text should just be text within the content, rather than on an image; it’s best practice from an SEO point of view to include longer sentences or paragraphs as text rather than within an image, so that search engines can locate them.

5. Be descriptive! Remember some of your audience will be relying on this alt text. Consider how much an image can bring to your content; what are the most important things for your audience to know about this image? What would you want to know, if you couldn’t see it?

Now let’s put those tips to work and write great alt text.

Here’s an image from my Instagram page.

And here’s some not-so-great alt text; ‘the image shows a book on a shelf with some flowers and some shells.’ We’ve wasted characters stating that there’s an image, we haven’t described the book and we haven’t given many clues as to the textures, colours or objects within the image.

Here’s some slightly better alt text; ‘Julia and the Shark, a book with a black and yellow cover featuring a child and a shark, stands on a shelf next to some flowers and shells’. That’s 138 characters - we can do more, and we can do better!

How about; ‘Julia and the Shark, a book with a cover featuring a child in a yellow waterproof and black illustrations of a shark and birds, sits on a shelf with white and grey shells, a small seagull ornament, and yellow daffodils in a vase.’ It’s descriptive, it’s within the ideal character limits, and it gives the user a better idea of the overall ‘feel’ of the image.

You can use a character counter like this to check your alt text length.

So, now you know what you want to write. But where and how do we add alt text to our posts?

It’s easier than you might think - no coding experience necessary! On Instagram, find the post you’d like to add alt text to and click the three dots in the right hand corner. Click ‘Edit’ then ‘Add Alt text’ - add in your carefully crafted words, click save and you’re done! You might see alt text included in people’s captions sometimes; it’s up to you whether you include the alt text there as well.

On Instagram stories, turn on captions or write out a quick alt text caption if you’re showing an image or video with no speech; again, this just ensures that your content is as accessible as possible.

Did you find this guide helpful? Would you like to see more content like this? Comment down below and share your thoughts!