Why "Alternative text" for images?

What is alternative text and why do we use these in our code for images?

Just imagine you planned to visit a beautiful place and the place that you planned to spend your vacation is popular, dream spot which is very famous about its natural and cultural beauty.

Lets name that place as Tittu (just a fictitious name for reference). Tittu is a country and it has many spots located at different places within country. Area wise its small and just have 200 miles of diameter. Tittu is not so big country and their local native citizens do not have industries or business because it has lot of mountains, hills, jungles and more which is neither suitable for establishing an industry nor have robust education system. However there were people who took self initiative to study abroad and have brilliant skills for entrepreneurship, just like big tycoons of Google, Facebook, Apple and take any example of any industry say Banking, Insurance, Retail, Food, Shipping, Technology, Services etc. I am giving examples of these industry because all these we are much familiar with their reach to mostly everyone in this world in some of other means. So lets continue now, the most brilliant people went outside a came to know that they have so incredible place which can be a projected as a tourist spot and they can build this place in such a way that its iconic places are well connected and have places to stay and enjoy local food. So these brilliant people gathered together, sat and come up with an excellent business plan. In short they created a project charter :). Now their challenge was talking to authorities, local people and convince them for participating in this plan because this plan was going to take a year to build houses, roads to connect the different spots by good roads, plan out local activities, food availability, and etc etc., you all know how a Project Manager plan out milestones, tasks, activities and release dates, agree :).

So finally they succeed in convincing people and authorities and set time to complete all prep work in 1 year and calculated all financials like expanses, ROI, profit distribution. In the meantime they formed a team who started visiting other countries to create a momentum of talks for this new tourist destination which is in under construction, so that people from other countries will be excited and start planning to visit and it went on with word of mount promotion strategy. Just like how promotions, road shows takes place for new product launch. (keep this "word of mouth strategy" in mind and try to compare this with latest technology which is currently present and we likely or unlikely use it in everyday life), lets continue here for now.

(I am leaving all border crossing, visa, passport things aside because that is not important here)

So finally, at the ending stage of project, people started calling in and asked for booking the rooms and stays, food options and what activities they will get during their stay. So I want to mention here that Tittu's native language is different than other countries, so Tittu's tourism management team setup a separate team who can interact with other language people for booking over phone.

And the day come when tourists started flowing in the country to consume the services of the product or in other words to visit the places :).

There are places or spots which are at some distance and tourists have to take their cars to visit and spend time there and come back to room and enjoy food.

Tourists started liking the place but there was a problem. I will come back to this problem, okay.

Now marketing team printed pamphlets and started sending to different places and notice that they printed in english which was common understandable language for other countries.

In one corner of the world, there was a country rich in natural resources and major exporter of natural resources. So due to resources rich and major exporter, people living in that small country were rich and had good surplus money to spend on the vacations and other leisure activities. But, the problem was communication because they were not aware of english language and their language of communication was different than country Tittu and also other countries, which was not common in any country.

English pamphlets reach to this rich country but people were not familiar with english so very few people in this rich country able to visit Tittu.

After some time passed, Tourist management team found that they were not getting revenue which was project earlier, their confidence level started going down and people losing hope from this business.

What was the problem? So now lets connect the dots:

"Tourists started liking the place but there was a problem" - the problem was, there were no direction sign boards in english, tourists facing challenges in reaching to the places in much more time that anticipated and losing most of the time in finding out the route rather than relaxing at the place. There were no translators who can explain about the food, its preparation and ingredients.

"Word of mouth strategy" - this word to mouth strategy works like a SEO (Search Engine Optimization). So initially when this tourist place was built then people were excited, but after visiting the place and finding disappointment about language and arrangements, they did not recommended this place to their friends and families.

"Rich Country language" - it was communicated that there is a tourist place but it was not created any joy to most of the people because they neither get the highlights of that place from pamphlet nor received good experience feedback about the place.

Now connect these three dots in your understanding and see what you understand from Alternative texts.

Okay let me explain you what and where Alternative text play role in images on web page-

First, Providing content for meaningful images for people who cannot see images but still have need or power to consume your service OR buy your product. Because we all know images or banner play major role in promotion and visualizations of concepts and we use images, so providing Alternative text in code make sure that it reaches to all people who can see images and to people who cannot see images. And describing images in meaningful manner is much more beneficial because words are the only punching power for visually impaired population.

Secondly, These Alternative Text are pickup by Search Engines and show up in search results which works as "Word of mouth strategy", eventually a broader reach about your page.

Thirdly, pages with alternative text appear more and on top in search results because visually challenge people set preferences to show only pages with Alternative texts in their search results.

Fourthly, combination of both, availability of Alternative text and meaningful Alternative text, influence more and reaches to more capable people who are big potential for your product or service.

Now to continue with Tittu's story, they identified the problem later and provisioned additional budget to add most understandable languages sign boards, trained more people to become translator for tourists and added more languages in pamphlets so that it reaches to every individual and convey the message which they intended to.

<img class="image" src="Banner.jpg" alt="Life Insurance New product launch benefits">        

Web Accessibility is an inclusive approach and this have to be followed from the very start of the project for best results from the beginning and also continue with every new code implementation for new feature functionality, new product page or any kind of updated on the web page.

Reachability is Accessibility, and benefits from all stances.