Describe your pictures so they can be read

A website made of beautiful photographs can still be invisible, because a search engine cannot see a photograph. It reads. To it, an undescribed picture is a blank.

The remedy is a short written description on each important image - what the trade calls alt text. It is the line you would say if you were describing the photo to someone on the phone. "A blue stoneware jug with a pulled handle, on a windowsill." Plain, true, no need to be clever.

This does two good things at once. Someone using a screen reader hears your work described instead of meeting silence. And a search engine, and the assistants that read pages, finally know what is in the picture, so your work can turn up when someone goes looking for it.

You do not need to describe every decorative dot and line. Describe the pieces that matter - the work itself. bernard's help has the words to ask for: describe images for Google.