It doesn’t need to be a full thought, I think.Chandler, M., Gerde, H. It could be like just a descriptive phrase. And it also doesn’t necessarily need to be a full sentence, I think. Just launch in with whatever the description is. You don’t need to say, ‘It’s an image of’ and then the thing. Like, we already are aware that it’s an image. So one of the best practices is not to start every image with a screenshot of, a screenshot of, because then, it just becomes repetitive. It starts with words that are not related to the thing.Īnd perhaps people, like also using screen reader would just skip through it. Like, ‘This is a recipe rich result.’ That probably isn’t the best alt text because it’s like a full sentence. And, I mean that’s… Even the way that you’ve phrased the sentence there. So if you’re looking at the search documentation, and you have a sample of a screenshot with a recipe result, then you could provide some additional context, I guess, in the alt text, where you say like, ‘This is a recipe result with these five fields.’ “ They want kind of to understand a specific topic to find some information.Īnd that additional context is something that you can provide in the alt text.Īnd that’s something that they might be searching for.Īnd if they’re searching for it, then make it easy for them to find that.” “Because ultimately, when you’re talking about Image Search, it’s not that people want an image, but rather they want information which is attached to that image. John then zeroes in on identifying what users want from images that are shown in Google’s Image Search. I’ll go there on vacation.’Īnd if you notice, well actually, this is before the chemical spill happened, then it’s like, ‘Well, maybe like that would lend itself to different kinds of Search queries.’ “ So if you have a picture of a beach, don’t just be like, ‘Oh, this is a photo of a beach.’īut rather like, ‘This is the beach before the chemical spill happened.’ And…īecause it’s very different context if someone is searching for a beach for a holiday, it’s like, ‘Oh, I want to see a beautiful beach. “From an SEO point of view, my recommendation is always to provide context for the image as well in the alt text. John next discusses alt text from the perspective of SEO. So that might be something to check out with someone who is a little bit more informed on accessibility-side. “So I think you have to watch out for accessibility… I don’t know… Like everything around accessibility. If they appear to have no informative value and aren’t links or buttons, it’s probably safe to treat them as decorative.” This should help you decide what (if any) information or function the images have. “Imagine that you’re reading the web page aloud over the phone to someone who needs to understand the page. Something to help to understand how alt text and accessibility intersect is offered by the official standards body for HTML, the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) in the form of a little trick for writing alt text for accessibility purposes. The purpose of alternative text in images is to provide audiences with screen readers a way to understand the images. John Mueller touches on the topic of accessibility and alt text. Or are there other strategies that we could apply for improving the words that we’re using for a given image?” Or it’s a picture of an event or something like that.ĭo you approach it from describing what’s in there? Maybe it’s a diagram of how Search works, like something that’s describing a concept. It could be improved in terms of being descriptive, or it’s describing the image, but not necessarily in the best way?īecause once you start to sit down and actually write the alt text, you discover that you could say a lot of things about, like, ‘Oh, it’s a Search result’ or you’re describing like something that’s happening. “What if you’ve got alt text, but you’re not sure if it’s good? Google’s Lizzi Sassman starts the discussion by considering what the best approach to writing alt text is, wondering if the right way is to be descriptive or if there’s another way. The subsequent conversation revealed that there are issues to consider like balancing the needs of SEO with using the alt text correctly for the purpose of accessibility. In a Google Search Off the Record podcast, Google’s Lizzi Sassman and John Mueller discussed writing alt text and share the thought process behind exceptional alt text.
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