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Navigating Accessibility: Alternative Text & Filenames

By providing clear and descriptive Alternative Texts and Filenames, you enhance the accessibility of your content, making it usable for a wider audience.

Author: Alyssa Lawson

Alternative Text

Alternative (Alt) Text is meant to convey the “why” of the image as it relates to the content of a document or webpage; it makes your content more accessible to all users, including those who use screen readers. So having appropriate text ensures that visually impaired individuals can understand the content.
 
Alt text also has important benefits for your website rankings. Search engines crawl alt text, so optimizing your images' alt text is an easy way to improve the user experience for all visitors.
 

Filenames

Search engines like Google use alt text and filenames to understand the content of images. By providing accurate filenames, you increase the likelihood of your images appearing in relevant search results, driving more traffic to your blog. Also, proper filenames help you stay organized within your media library.

Badly worded alt text implies a woman is eating her laptop.
Bad alt text reads "Woman eating-laptop."
Take a look the at the example to the left: A more appropriate filename for the image could be something like "Woman multitasking: eating while working" or "Woman-working-laptop-while-eating." 
 
These filenames provide more context and detail about the activities depicted in the image, making it more useful for both users and search engines.
 
Example uses dashes instead of spaces in an image file name.

Don't include spaces or other punctuation in your folder or file name. Take for example the picture on the left. Using dashes in this manner: “employer-woman.jpg”. 

Search engines interpret hyphens and dashes in file and directory names as spaces between words. Underscores are generally not recognized, meaning that their presence can negatively affect SEO.

Ensuring all filenames have appropriate names not only benefits yourself, but also streamlines the workflow for other employees who may need to access these photos. With descriptive names, finding the right image becomes a quick and efficient process, saving time and effort for everyone involved. 
 
Moreover, for your readers, clear and concise filenames facilitate better understanding and interpretation of the visual content. This enhances the overall user experience, making it easier for them to engage with your content and grasp its message effectively.