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Alt text
A short text description of an image, read aloud by screen readers and used by search engines to understand what the image shows.
What is alt text?
Alt text (alternative text) is a written description of an image. It does two jobs: makes the image accessible to people using screen readers, and gives social network algorithms a hint about what's in the picture. Most networks let you add it on every image post — and most posters skip it.
Why it matters
- Accessibility: a blind user scrolling Instagram with VoiceOver hears your alt text; without it, the post is silent
- SEO and discovery: Instagram and Pinterest use alt text to surface posts in topic feeds and search; LinkedIn uses it for content classification
- Resilience: when an image fails to load, the alt text shows in its place
How to write it
- Describe what's there, not what you want the reader to feel: "Two people laughing over coffee at a wooden table" beats "A joyful moment"
- Keep it under ~125 characters for screen reader cadence
- Don't start with "Image of..." — screen readers already announce that it's an image
- Skip the keyword-stuffing — it hurts both accessibility and SEO
In TryPost, alt text is a field on every image upload — set it once when you draft the post and it carries through to every connected network that supports it.