How to Write Good Alt Text

Welcome to module 3 of our accessibility training. This video will focus on writing good alt text.

Good alt text has three general traits:

• Good alt text describes the content of the image, more specifically the content of the image that is relevant and meaningful to the surrounding text. This leads into the next element of good alt text.
• As we explored in the last module, context is key when it comes to determining whether alt text is needed. It’s also important for determining what should be written in the alt text. We’ll explore this further in the next couple slides.
• Finally, good alt text is concise. Not every detail of the image will be relevant to the surrounding content. So don’t waste your reader’s time on unnecessary information in the image.

As we go through the following examples of alt text in different contexts, try to keep in mind how the suggested alt text is concise, and describes the contents of the image.

As we discussed in the last module, this photo could be used in many different contexts. Assuming you have already determined that the photo needs alt text in each of these following contexts, we’ll create different alt text to fit each scenario.

Our first example article is about Indigenous art installations in Ontario. From this topic, we can already draw out some relevant information from the photo, such as the Indigeneity of the artist, the medium and subject of the art, and the location. Therefore, some potential alt text could be: “Locavore, by Indigenous artist Mary Anne Barkhouse is a sculpture installation in Carleton University’s quad that depicts a snowshoe hare and a Western coyote.”

Other contexts would lead to other elements of the image being put into focus. Our second example article shifts focus to representations of predator-prey relationships in art. This would require different elements to be drawn out in the alt text, such as the artistic detail of the sculpture, as well as a description of the animals and their relative position to one another. Alt text for the image in this context could be: “a bronze sculpture depicting a snowshoe hare on a pedestal, observed by a Western coyote. The pedestal places the hare a short distance above the coyote.”

In our final example of context for this image, it appears in an article about the unveiling of the sculpture at Carleton. This article might draw the gathering in the background into focus, as the topic of the article is about the event of the unveiling, rather than the sculpture itself.

Potential alt text could therefore be: “a gathering of Carleton community members in the quad, foregrounded by the new sculpture, Locavore.”

While these are just three examples of the many ways in which an image like this might be used, hopefully this gives you an idea of how context plays a role in determining alt text. To review, good alt text should describe the contents of the image, that are relevant to the image’s context, in a concise way.