For example, consider a magnifying glass image inside a search button that has the text 'Search'. On the other hand, it's not always useful to describe an image. And a sighted user faces the same challenge - figuring out what clicking the site logo does - as a screen reader user. It might be tempting to give it a simpler text alternative of 'home' or 'main page', but that does a disservice to both low-vision and sighted users.Д«ut imagine a screen reader user who wants to locate the masthead logo on the page giving it an alt value of 'home' actually creates a more confusing experience. We can describe the image pretty accurately as 'The Funion logo'. In order for a string to be a usable text alternative, it needs to convey the same concept as the image, in the same context.Д¬onsider a linked logo image in the masthead of a page like those shown above. Writing useful alt text is a bit of an art.

alt differs from title, or any type of caption, in that it is only used if the image is not available.

alt allows you to specify a simple string to be used any time the image isn't available, such as when the image fails to load, or is accessed by web crawling bot, or is encountered by a screen reader.

Then the screen reader can announce a succinct description of the image ( seen in the black VoiceOver bar) and the user can choose whether to move on to the article. You can use the alt attribute to provide a useful text alternative to this image - for example, 'A cat staring menacingly off into space.' A screen reader will announce this image using its literal name, '/160204193356-01-cat-500.jpg'. In the page we have a picture of a cat, illustrating an article on cats' well-known judgmental behavior. Study shows 9 out of 10 cats quietly judging their owners as they sleep # Study shows 9 out of 10 cats quietly judging their owners as they sleep We must consider the role an image plays in a page to work out what type of text alternative it should have. Images are an important component of most web pages, and are of course a particular sticking point for low-vision users.

Study shows 9 out of 10 cats quietly judging their owners as they sleep.ItвЂ™s not that the webpage in the text web search would rank better because it has an image. ItвЂ™s really just we see the alt text and we apply that to the image, and if someone searches for the image we can use that to better understand the image. ItвЂ™s not the case that we would say a textual webpage has more value because it has images. I would focus more on the accessibility aspect there rather than the pure SEO aspect. For things like stock photos where you know that the same image is on lots of other sites, you donвЂ™t care about image search for that. ThatвЂ™s something for decorative images, sometimes you just donвЂ™t care. And if you donвЂ™t care about this image for image search, then thatвЂ™s fine do whatever you want with it. But from an SEO point of view the alt text really helps us to understand the image better for image search. So I canвЂ™t speak for the accessibility point of view, so thatвЂ™s the one angle that is there. When it comes to using alt text in general, Mueller recommends focusing on the accessibility aspect rather than the SEO aspect. Google doesnвЂ™t see a page as more valuable to web search because it has images with alt text. In the question that relates to the title of this article, Mueller is asked if alt text should be used for decorative images.ДЇrom an SEO point of view, the decision to use alt text depends on whether you care about the images showing up in image search.

As Mueller explains, alt text doesnвЂ™t add value to a page when it comes to ranking in web search.

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