Some Explanation On the Use of Alt Text
A recent report conducted by Campaign Monitor recently exposed the pros and cons of the implementation of Alt Text in emails. Most importantly the report reveals which email clients handle Alt Text and which don’t.
But first off, let me explain what Alt Text is. In laymen’s terms, it’s text that displays in place of an image. This is important for those who are visually impaired who often use screen readers. Screen readers read all of the text on a page such as lists, links, headlines and alt text (in place of images). In some cases, alt text is used when a users’ browsing device cannot display images.
A website’s code snippet may look as such:
“![[photo: Dog chasing car]](file.jpg)
”
It will be read by the screen reader as:
“Image: Dog chasing car”
From Campaign Monitor’s study, the following results were compiled:
Yahoo Mail, Windows Live Mail, Hotmail & Apple Mail do not render alt text.
Yahoo Mail Beta, Thunderbird, Outlook 2003 and Outlook Express do render alt text.
Some clients, especially Eudora, have their own protocols for alt text. Instead of displaying the text, it only displays the image’s URL path.
In some cases, if the alt text is too long, it can break an email’s design - trying to fit all of the text within certain constraints. So to avoid this problem, leave your alt text short and sweet.
Read the entire report here.
Posted by MindComet on Feb. 07, 2007