Glossary · Indexing and discovery
alt text
The text alternative for an image, read by screen readers and by any client that does not render images. Its absence is an accessibility failure; its presence is not evidence of a photograph, because a placeholder can carry alt text too.
What alt text means
The text alternative for an image, read by screen readers and by any client that does not render images. Its absence is an accessibility failure; its presence is not evidence of a photograph, because a placeholder can carry alt text too. Decorative images should carry an empty alt rather than none.
Where alt text comes up on this site
- We reviewed all 150 scored rows against seven site types. Here is what we unscored, and why.All twelve were image links with alt text or aria-labels, which a screen reader and a crawler both read.
Terms this definition uses
Related terms in Indexing and discovery
Whether a page can be found and kept, separately from whether it can be fetched.
index coverage · canonical · noindex · X-Robots-Tag · orphan page · E-E-A-T · E-E-A-T proxies · topical authority · Soft 404 · case consistency · accessibility structure · landmark region · accessible name · skip link · main landmark · alt attribute · form control name · duplicate id · IndexNow · faceted navigation · thin content · duplicate content · near-duplicate · boilerplate · MinHash · shingle · dead anchor · placeholder content · image placeholder · EXIF
Questions about alt text
What is alt text?
The text alternative for an image, read by screen readers and by any client that does not render images. Its absence is an accessibility failure; its presence is not evidence of a photograph, because a placeholder can carry alt text too.
What does alt text not show or guarantee?
The text alternative for an image, read by screen readers and by any client that does not render images. Its absence is an accessibility failure; its presence is not evidence of a photograph, because a placeholder can carry alt text too. Decorative images should carry an empty alt rather than none.
Which area of the glossary does alt text belong to?
Indexing and discovery: Whether a page can be found and kept, separately from whether it can be fetched.
← image placeholder · EXIF →
See it in the full glossary · 668 terms across 19 areas.