WebProNews

By effectively labeling images that lack descriptive or any ALT-attribute text, people who use screen readers can more fully understand the contents of images on a web page.

Yahoo Pushes ALT-ernative Text For Images

Not everyone sees websites the same way. Some folks have to deal with a variety of issues that make the use of a screen reader an absolute necessity when browsing the Internet.

When someone posting an image to a web page includes the ALT attribute with text in the IMG tag, a screen reader can recite that text to the person browsing the image. Without ALT information, image-laden sites offer a depressing experience to screen reader users.

It's a situation the Yahoo! Accessibility Stakeholders Group wants to address. Victor Tsaran, of Yahoo's Accessibility Program, blogged about this on Yahoo's official blog:

The Yahoo! Accessibility Stakeholders Group decided to do something this week to help reduce the number of unlabeled images on Yahoo! web sites as well as to encourage Yahoo! developers and designers to pay attention to things that are not readily visible on the screen.

The ALT= campaign is just one of the many programs my team has created to help Yahoos keep universal accessibility in mind as they design and build our products. We hope it’ll improve your experience across our network.

Web developers of all sorts should be as mindful of their images and ALT text, especially in e-commerce. Just because someone uses a screen reader doesn't preclude them from becoming a loyal customer.