Google’s John Mueller and Lizzi Sassman discuss creating image alt text that’s good for those using screen readers, briefly touching on what to do with decorative images and how tricky it is to write alt text that strikes the balance between SEO and accessibility.
Is alt text for accessibility and SEO?
According to the World Wide Web Consortium (commonly known as W3C), the official HTML standards body, the purpose of image alt text is to make images comprehensible to site visitors who cannot see image content and use screen readers.
Alt text also helps those using screen readers understand the purpose of the image or become aware of the text in the image.
The W3C also says that alt text also serves an SEO purpose.
“…if you want your website to be indexed as it deserves, use the alt attribute to ensure that important sections of your pages are not missed.”
You can say that the purpose of alt text is to make images understandable and accessible to those who cannot see the image, which includes search engine bots.
It takes a surprising amount of thought to get alt text right. The W3C published an alternative text tutorial for seven different types of image contexts.
Don’t call a picture a picture
While SEO may require that a screenshot’s alt text say that the image is a screenshot, for accessibility purposes it’s considered redundant (and annoying to write that an image is an image).
Lizz Sassman and John Mueller discuss handling this problem:
“So one of the best practices is not to start every image with a screenshot, a screenshot, because then it becomes repetitive.
We are already aware that it is an image. You don’t have to say, “It’s a picture of” and then the thing.
Just roll with whatever the description is. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be a whole sentence either, I think.
John Mueller: Yes.
Lizzi Sassman: It could just be a descriptive phrase. It doesn’t have to be a complete reflection, I think.
Balance SEO needs with accessibility
John Mueller introduces the topic of the tension between what is traditional SEO practice regarding image alt text and accessibility requirements.
Mueller continued:
“John Mueller: Yeah, yeah. I think that makes a lot of sense.
I mean, the tricky part is probably balancing both sides. The accessibility aspect type. What people want from alt text for accessibility.
And then the SEO aspect where you would do some things like… traditionally, you would do some things that might be slightly different.
Like listing a bunch of synonyms, for example.
Like, “Oh, this is a beach on the ocean with waves.”
And this is the kind of thing where sometimes it makes sense to do it in the alt text for SEO reasons, but probably not for accessibility reasons.
And finding that balance is something that is sometimes a bit tricky.
So it’s good to keep an eye on that.”
Something is better than nothing
An important point about image alt text is that it is bad practice to leave the alt text field blank.
One of the reasons it’s a bad practice is because screen readers can start reading image file names, which is a bad user experience.
Another reason is because it deprives visitors who use screen readers of receiving important information that may be in some of the images.
Then there are SEO considerations around alt text and getting images to be indexed and found correctly in search.
John Mueller recommends adding something to the alt text because something is better than nothing.
He suggested:
“John Mueller: But if you’re just adding alt text for the first time, sometimes even any alt text is better than nothing.
Lizzi Sassman: Like nothing.
At least starting with something, but then what can you do to improve even on top of that.”
Alternative text and decorative images
Next, Lizzi Sassman discussed what to do with decorative images.
The first problem is to distinguish between whether an image is truly decorative or whether it is conceptual and contributes to the meaning of the content, in which case the challenge is how to communicate a conceptual image.
Lizzi commented:
“And that’s definitely something that… I think I struggle with more, like the more you get into decorative imagery, or things that aren’t…
I don’t know… the search result is pretty simple.
But once it gets into things like, “Oh, that’s a concept,” or like, “It’s decorative,” so it doesn’t…
There are some sites that say, “Oh, you don’t need to put alt text on a decorative image.”
As if it’s only there for aesthetics, it’s best to leave the alt text empty.
But then again, why would I have put it there? There was a reason to put it there.
So shouldn’t we have something that fills that gap for the experience of someone who doesn’t see the image?
Shouldn’t we have a replacement thing? It was serving a purpose.
We put it there for a reason, like what would be an alternate experience to convey that information, I guess?
So, like Googlebot, how to do things.
Sometimes we have them, I guess it would be classified as a decorative image.
Where it’s like Googlebot is crawling the web, or something.
Or as if conveying some kind of idea, and the alt text should focus on the idea? Or like, “Oh, it’s Googlebot with some friends.”
Or is it Googlebot…like spamming a computer and then being happy in the end.
How to describe what’s going on in there, so that you still have an idea of what was supposed to be there is, I guess, one of the things that…yeah, it confuses me.
John Mueller: Yes. I mean from a personal point of view, I would definitely add alt text to these kind of images, because they are unique and special.
It’s not…I don’t know…a floral background, or something.
It’s actually something where people spend a lot of time creating that image.
And it’s also something people would want to find in search results.
So if you’re looking for Googlebot, because we spend so much time creating all these images, it’ll be nice to be able to find them too.”
The W3C has published a full page of documentation on how to handle alt text for decorative images.
This is the officer W3C Recommendation:
“Decorative images do not add information to the content of a page.
For example, the information provided by the image may already be provided by adjacent text, or the image could be included to make the website more visually appealing.
In these cases, a null (empty) alt text (alt=””) should be provided so that assistive technologies such as screen readers can ignore them.
Text values for these types of images would add audible clutter to the screen reader output or could distract users if the subject is different from the adjacent text.”
The W3C also suggests four ways to identify a decorative image.
Four tests to know if an image is decorative:
The image is used to style the document (the look and feel) If it is an image that complements the link text It does not add information to the text content The image is described by the content of the surrounding text
Ultimately, it is up to the author to decide what is best for the image alt text.
As Google said, something is better than nothing. So if the image doesn’t provide information, just use the null value for the alt text, which is encoded with alt=””
Summons
Listen to this part of the Google podcast at the 15:17 minute mark:
Featured image by Shutterstock/Roman Samborskyi
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