How to View Alt Text?

Alt text, short for “alternative text,” is crucial in web accessibility and SEO by providing textual descriptions of images. This feature is essential for individuals who use assistive technologies, like screen readers, who verbally communicate the content on a webpage to those who are blind or visually impaired. Additionally, alt text is a fallback when images fail to load due to technical issues. This functionality serves more than accessibility, as alt text helps search engines understand and index the content of an image, enhancing a website’s visibility and SEO rankings. In this article, we will delve into how to view alt text using browser developer tools and Microsoft Word, while also highlighting its importance for accessibility and search engine optimization.

What is alt text?

Alt text refers to a brief, descriptive text associated with an image. Its primary purpose is to provide context or explain the image to users who cannot view it, such as those relying on screen readers or encountering connectivity issues that prevent images from loading. This simple yet effective practice ensures that users still understand the image’s significance. For search engine optimization (SEO), alt text offers a means for search engines to comprehend the visual content, which they cannot interpret on their own. Including well-crafted alt text helps in ranking higher in image search results, thereby boosting the discoverability of your content.

Why is alt text important?

• Accessibility: Alt text is fundamental to web accessibility, ensuring that screen readers can relay the content of images to visually impaired users. This enables them to engage with the webpage more fully, even when visual elements are a primary component of the site.
• SEO Benefits: Search engines like Google index web pages by crawling all content, including alt text. Properly optimized alt text enhances a site’s visibility by helping search engines understand what the image is about, making the page more likely to rank well in image and web searches.
•  Backup for Image Loading Errors: In cases where an image fails to load due to slow internet connections or server issues, the alt text acts as a backup. Instead of showing a broken image icon, the browser displays the alt text, allowing users to grasp the image’s context or purpose.

How to View Alt Text in a Web Browser

Accessing the alt text of images on a webpage is straightforward using a browser’s built-in developer tools. Here’s a simple guide on how to view the alt text by inspecting an image:

Step-by-Step Instructions for Viewing Alt Text in a Web Browser

• Right-click on the image: Navigate to the image you want to inspect and right-click on it.
• Choose “Inspect” (Chrome, Edge) or “Inspect Element” (Firefox, Safari): From the context menu that appears, select the option to inspect the image. This will open the browser’s Developer Console.
• Find the alt attribute in the Developer Console: The HTML code for the webpage will appear, usually in a panel at the bottom or side of the browser window. Locate the <img> tag corresponding to the image and look for the alt attribute. The text inside the quotation marks is the alt text.

Example:

<img src=”image.jpg” alt=” A scenic view of mountains during sunset”>

In the example above, the alt text is: “A scenic view of the mountains during sunset.”

How to View Alt Text in Microsoft Word

Alt text isn’t limited to web pages; it also appears in documents like Microsoft Word to enhance the accessibility of embedded images. You can easily view and modify alt text in Word to ensure your documents are more accessible.

Steps to View Alt Text in Microsoft Word:

1. Right-click on the image: In your Word document, locate the image and right-click on it.
2. Select “View Alt Text”: From the menu that appears, click on “View Alt Text.”
3. Alt Text Pane: The Alt Text pane will open on the right-hand side of your screen, displaying the current alt text. You can view or edit this description to make it more accurate or meaningful.

Editing Alt Text in Word

In the Alt Text pane, you can edit the description by typing a new one that better reflects the image. Make sure the description is concise yet vivid, allowing users to understand the essence of the image in just a few words.

Viewing alt text in other applications.

Alt text is not exclusive to web browsers and Microsoft Word. You can also view and modify it in other applications like Google Docs, PowerPoint, and certain PDF readers. The process is generally similar: right-click on the image, and look for an option related to alt text. These tools often provide built-in features to manage alt text, ensuring documents remain accessible across various platforms.

Best Practices for Writing Alt Text

Whether you’re viewing, editing, or creating alt text, it’s important to follow best practices to ensure accessibility and SEO benefits:

• Paint a Vivid Picture: Describe the image in a clear, concise manner. Instead of using vague terms like “image” or “photo,” describe what the image represents.
• Use Relevant Keywords: If the image is vital to the page’s SEO, incorporate relevant keywords naturally. However, avoid keyword stuffing, as this can hurt user experience and SEO.
• Keep it Simple and Clear: Alt text should be short, ideally under 125 characters. This keeps the description to the point while providing essential details.
• Avoid Redundancy: If the surrounding text already describes the image, the alt text can be left minimal or empty. For purely decorative images, it’s common to leave the alt text blank (e.g., alt=” ”).

Example of Good Alt Text

A good alt text for a photo of a tech conference would be: “Tech professionals networking at a conference.”

Conclusion

Viewing alt text is a simple but essential task for ensuring that websites and documents are accessible and optimized for search engines. Whether you’re using a web browser’s developer tools or viewing it in Microsoft Word, the process is quick and easy. By adhering to best practices for writing alt text, you can significantly enhance the user experience, particularly for those who rely on assistive technologies, while also boosting your site’s SEO. Alt text serves multiple purposes, including accessibility, SEO benefits, and providing a fallback for image loading issues, making it a critical component of modern digital content.