Written by Holly Gibbons, GBS Web Services

Alt Text is a valuable tool for businesses and individuals alike, whether you’re crafting a website or bolstering your social media presence. Beyond facilitating swift navigation, it serves as a gateway to inclusivity, ensuring that your content—and consequently, your message—is accessible to a wider audience. Here are some key benefits:

Enhanced Accessibility: Alt Text caters to individuals with visual impairments, low vision, cognitive/ learning disabilities, and more, providing them with a seamless browsing experience.

Screen Reader Compatibility: It furnishes users employing screen reader software with essential information that might otherwise be overlooked, enriching their interaction with your content.

Contextual Insight: By offering descriptive captions for images, Alt Text grants your audience deeper insights into your brand or business. Whether it’s elucidating the purpose behind a particular image or highlighting its significance, these descriptions foster greater user engagement.

ADA Compliance: Due to increasing standards of inclusivity, including alt text is rapidly becoming a necessity in order to meet ADA guidelines, and the sooner we learn to embrace this, the better.

Beyond its technical merits, investing time in Alt Text embodies a commitment to inclusivity. By making online content more accessible, you’re enriching the lives of individuals who rely on the internet as a vital conduit to the world. Ultimately, the decision to embrace Alt Text transcends mere utility—it’s about fostering a more inclusive digital landscape, one interaction at a time.

This is an excerpt from a longer article. Find the full article at gbswebservices.com/2024/03/05/the-importance-of-alt-text/

This article was published in the Venango Chamber’s April 2024 VenangoWorks! Newsletter.