Ever wondered what those bits of text are that appear when you hover over images or buttons in a browser? Don't know what they’re there for or how to turn them on or off?
These are called ALT tags. They provide a text alternative to the images and buttons on the page, and while they might not add anything to your design they do actually serve a purpose. Or rather, two purposes:
Anyone who is visually impaired will rely on ALT tags to tell them what the image depicts or what the button does. They use Screen readers, and these read out the text in the ALT tag and inform the user about the image or button.
When search engines trawl through the text on webpages looking for keywords, they also go through the ALT tags on the images and buttons.
So creating descriptive, keyword-rich ALT tags not only provides a better experience to anyone browsing your web pages, it can also move your site up in the rankings for search engines.
The beauty of ALT tags in Lectora is that you can actually choose if you want to use them or not, literally by checking or unchecking a box. So you can set up all your images and buttons with descriptions, and if you ever need them, you can just turn them on or off like flicking a light switch.
You’ll find this checkbox under the HTML tab when you go to publish your course. As you might have guessed, it’s called ‘Create ALT Tags for Images and Buttons’. Check the box, republish your course, and hey presto, you’ve got ALT tags.
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