alt text

[ awlt tekst ]

noun

, Digital Technology.

1. a written description of an image or other nontext content, included as an attribute in HTML code and rendered as text in place of the image or other element if it does not load on the web page or read by screen reader software at the point in the page sequence where the nontext element appears:

   If there’s no alt text for an image, a screen reader will read the filename—even if it’s just a string of numbers and letters.

Word History and Origins

Origin of alt text¹

First recorded in 1995–2000