“A question that I frequently get when I talk about accessibility for social media is, “How do I write good alternative text for the pictures I post?”

If you’re not familiar with alternative text—more commonly known as alt text—it’s the written copy that describes the content of an image in a digital space and plays a significant role in making the online world more inclusive.

The importance of alt text

The purpose of alt text is two-fold; if an image on a webpage fails to load, the alt text will indicate what the missing image was supposed to be. It’s also vital for anyone who uses a screen reader or text-to-speech technology to consume digital content because the alt text is meant to accurately describe the photo out loud to the user.

While adding alt text to images on websites is mostly considered a common best practice at this point, social media is only just starting to catch up.”