What can we all do to improve the accessibility of our content? We must not forget about people who can not see our images or maybe they even don’t want to use money to download them in the first place.
But if we include an image or a graph, then we must make sure we also describe it in raw textual form. That is alternative text’s mission – to provide an alternative description for everybody not able to see the image.
All images that provide a meaning must be described as a raw text, so that everybody can understand them
Let’s say you are doing some research online on your daily commute with a train. And let’s say that there are some sections of the railway that are underground where there is no internet access. And just before the train enters the tunnel you find an article that sounds just right for you. It is slowly beginning to show, and then all of the sudden it stops loading. Your browser got the text but – all the images are missing.
As a sighted user – you are missing the information that authors provided through images, unless they included some other text describing the meaning of the images, right.
So if author was including some alternative text for the images, then you can get the desired information by just reading it. And that is one of the first principles of web accessibility – providing alternative texts for all non-textual contents that is importing for understanding.
Please provide alternative text to all your images that have a meaning – whenever you make digital content. Be it article for a webpage, PowerPoint presentation, online video,…
me, begging you
