What is Alt Text?

Alt text is a written description of an image read aloud by screen readers for visually impaired visitors, which is its primary purpose, but it also helps search engines understand image content since they cannot see images the way people do, and it displays as a fallback if an image fails to load.

Good alt text describes what is actually in the image specifically and concisely, in a way that would make sense to someone who cannot see it, without stuffing it with keywords unrelated to the image itself. Woman using laptop is more useful than best web developer services company, even on a services page.

Purely decorative images that add no informational content should have an empty alt attribute so screen readers skip over them rather than announcing something meaningless. Every image that conveys actual information, including icons that represent an action, needs a real, descriptive alt text value.