Use the alt attribute to describe the function of each visual

What are alt attributes useful for?

The alt attribute is defined in a set of tags (namely, img, area and optionally for input and applet) to allow you to provide a text equivalent for the object.

A text equivalent brings the following benefits to your web site and its visitors in the following common situations:

What should I put in my alt attribute?

The generic rule for the content of the alt attribute is: use text that fulfills the same function as the image.

Some more specific rules:

Further Reading

About the "QA Tips"

The W3C QA Tips are short documents explaining useful bits of knowledge for Web developers or designers, hosted and produced by the Quality Assurance Interest Group at W3C.

While the tips are carefully reviewed by the participants of the group, they should not be seen as anything else than informative bits of wisdom, and especially, they are not normative W3C technical specifications.

Learn more about the Tips, how to submit your own pearls of wisdom, and find all the other QA tips in the Tips Index.

Created Date: 2002-11-20 by Dominique Hazaël-Massieux; send feedback to public-evangelist@w3.org (a publicly archived mailing list)
Last modified $Date: 2017/11/27 16:37:38 $ by $Author: coralie $