What Is Alternative Text In Canva?
Did You Add Alternative Text In Canva?
You’ve come to the right place! In this article, you’ll learn everything you need to know what is alternative text in Canva. How do you know this is the best, most complete guide?
I’ve been a graphic designer since 2005 and used Canva since 2012, and Canva is one of my absolute favorite platforms I love using to create marketing assets quickly. I’ve spent a lot of time on Canva, and I’m ready to share all my Canva tips and hacks with you.
Meantime, the alternative text known as the alt attribute or HTML attribute, is a short description given to an image published on the internet. First introduced in 1993, it has to describe the image such that you can tell what that image is showing even without looking at the actual image.
If you have heard about the alternative text or seen it in Canva and wondering what that is, this is your chance to learn more. Let’s dive in!
What is Alternative Text in Canva?
Alternative text in Canva, often referred to as “alt text,” is a short description of an image that serves a critical purpose in web accessibility. It provides context for individuals who cannot view the image, primarily those who are visually impaired or blind, and use screen readers to access content.
You can find the in-built option to add alt text in Canva as well as other graphic design tools including Adobe Express (formally known as Adobe Spark).
What Is Alternative Text In Canva?
Why Add Alt Text In Canva?
When designing, whether you’re using templates or creating your design elements from scratch, consider adding alt text to your images.
For instance, if you’re using a background image or a decorative image, adding alt text can help screen reader users understand the context. The alt text should describe the image in a concise and informative manner.
- Accessibility Compliance: With alt text, you’re taking a step towards making your website more inclusive. It aids visually impaired users in understanding the content better, enhancing the overall user experience.
- SEO Optimization: Alt text provides an opportunity to include your keywords, allowing machines to digest it, helping improve the website’s SEO. While the main purpose is accessibility, the inclusion of relevant keywords can boost your website’s visibility.
What Is Alternative Text In Canva?
How to Add Alternative Text in Canva
Canva allows users to add alternative text to their images, which helps maintain accessibility standards.
Step 1: Open Image Settings
After you’ve uploaded your desired image to Canva, click on the image to select it.
In the toolbar pop-up just above the design page, select the three-dotted button to open the drop-down options menu.
Step 2: Select Alternative Text
Select Alternative Text at the bottom of the menu.
Step 3: Add Alternative Text
Here, you can input your alternative text in the Alternative Text field. Then click the Save button.
What Is Alternative Text In Canva?
Best Practices for Writing Effective Alt Text
While adding alt text is important, it’s equally vital to ensure it’s effective. Now that you know what is alternative text in Canva, here are a few tips to help you craft meaningful alt text you can add to your images:
- Be Descriptive: The alt text should accurately depict the image. It doesn’t need to be lengthy but should be precise enough to convey the image’s context.
- Avoid Keyword Stuffing: While including relevant keywords is helpful for SEO, don’t overdo it. The primary purpose of alt text is accessibility, not SEO.
- Avoid Phrases Like “Image Of”: It’s assumed that the alt text refers to an image, so it’s unnecessary to include such phrases.
After adding an alternative text to your image, upload it to your website and use an accessibility checker to scan your web pages. It can help to identify web accessibility issues and what you can do to fix them.
Limitations of Alt Text in Canva
While alt text plays a crucial role, there are limitations in Canva. It doesn’t automatically generate alt text for images. Therefore, the responsibility falls to you to add it manually.
The Future Of Adding Alt Text in Canva
With technological advancements, automatic alt text generation may be incorporated into Canva in the future. This feature could harness the power of AI to generate accurate and useful alt text, taking a significant step towards making the internet more accessible for everyone.
Final Thoughts: Alternative Text In Canva
Alternative text is an essential aspect of online content creation, and platforms like Canva recognize its significance by providing the tool to add it to your images. While it might seem like an insignificant detail, alt text can make a world of difference in making the internet a more inclusive space.
So next time you’re designing on Canva, remember to add the alt text. It won’t take much of your time, and you’ll be contributing to a more accessible web. Isn’t that something worth investing a few extra minutes in?
What Is Alternative Text In Canva?
Alternative Text: Frequently Asked Questions
What Are Text Alternatives Used For?
Text alternatives serve as an accessibility tool in digital content creation. They cater primarily to people who cannot see or hear the content, aiding them in understanding the context of the visual or audio elements.
Uses of Text Alternatives
- Supporting Visually Impaired Users: Text alternatives provide descriptions of visual elements, making content accessible for users with visual impairments. These descriptions can be read by screen readers, providing a better understanding of the visual content.
- Assisting Search Engines: Search engines can’t “see” images or “hear” audio, but they can understand text. Text alternatives help search engines understand the context of non-text content, potentially improving the content’s SEO performance.
What Is Alternative Text In Canva?
What Is The Difference Between Caption And Alt Text?
While both alt text and captions provide descriptions of images, their usage and purpose differ significantly.
What is Alt Text?
Alt text is a short, descriptive text that provides an explanation of an image for individuals who can’t view it. It’s read by screen readers for visually impaired users and displayed when an image fails to load on a website.
What is a Caption?
On the other hand, a caption is a brief description that appears alongside an image, video, or audio file. It’s visible to all users and provides additional context or information about the visual or audio content.
Key Differences
Here are the two main differences:
- Visibility: Alt text is not visible on a webpage unless the image fails to load, while captions are always visible and placed close to the image.
- Audience: Alt text is intended for screen readers to improve web accessibility, while captions are meant for all viewers, adding context to an image.
What Is Alternative Text In Canva?
What Is An Example Of Alt Text For An Image?
Crafting effective alt text is an art. It should be brief, yet descriptive enough to convey the context of the image. Here are a few examples:
- If the image is a photo of a golden retriever playing in the park, the alt text could be: “Golden retriever joyfully fetching a red frisbee in a sunlit park.”
- If it’s an infographic about global warming effects, the alt text might be: “Infographic detailing the effects of global warming, including rising sea levels and extreme weather patterns.”
- For a company logo, the alt text could simply be: “Company’s name logo.”
What Is Alternative Text In Canva?
What Is The Difference Between Alt Text And Image Description?
Alt text and image descriptions are both accessibility tools, but they serve different purposes and audiences.
What is An Alt Text
Alt text is a brief and concise description that gives the necessary context of an image to those who can’t view it. It’s typically for users with visual impairments who rely on screen readers to understand the image’s content. Alt text is also displayed if the image can’t load or when images are turned off in the browser settings.
What Is An Image Description
Image Description is a more detailed description of an image. It’s often used in instances where a more elaborate explanation of the image is necessary for the understanding of the content. Image descriptions are typically provided separately from the image, like in a caption or within the main text.
The main difference between the two lies in the level of detail provided and their placement. Alt text is concise and embedded in the image’s HTML code, while image descriptions are more detailed and are typically placed within the content.
What Is Alternative Text In Canva?
Who Primarily Uses Alternative Text?
The primary users of alternative text, or alt text, are individuals with visual impairments. They utilize screen readers, which read out the alt text, providing the context and content of the image. This allows these users to understand the image without actually seeing it.
Apart from visually impaired users, alt text is also utilized by search engines. Search engines can’t “view” images, but they can read the alt text, which helps them understand the image’s context and improves the website’s SEO performance.
What Is Alternative Text In Canva?
Why Should You Add Alternative Text To Your Messages?
Adding alternative text to your messages is essential for several reasons:
Improving Accessibility
Alt text makes your content accessible to visually impaired users. It helps them understand the context of any images included in your messages, enhancing their overall experience.
Enhancing SEO
Alt text contributes to your content’s SEO performance. By including relevant keywords in the alt text, search engines can better understand the context of your images, potentially boosting your content’s visibility.
Ensuring Content Integrity
If for some reason, an image in your message fails to load, the alt text will be displayed in its place. This maintains the integrity of your message, ensuring that your audience doesn’t miss out on important information.
What Is Alternative Text In Canva?
Why Should You Add Alternative Text To Your Images?
Alternative text or alt text is essential for various reasons:
Enhancing Accessibility
The primary reason to add alt text is to enhance web accessibility. Visually impaired users rely on screen readers to interpret and describe images. Alt text provides these descriptions, making your content more accessible to these users.
Boosting SEO Performance
Alt text can help improve your website’s SEO performance. Search engines cannot view images but can read the alt text, allowing them to understand the image’s context. By including relevant keywords in your alt text, you can enhance your content’s visibility on search engine results.
Preserving Content Integrity
If an image fails to load for any reason, the alt text will be displayed in its place. This helps preserve the content’s integrity, ensuring your audience still gets the intended message.
What Is Alternative Text In Canva?
What Is The Purpose Of Adding Alternative Text Alt Text To An Image In Your Document Linkedin?
Adding alt text to images in your LinkedIn documents serves the same fundamental purpose as adding it anywhere else: accessibility. Here’s why it’s essential:
Promoting Inclusivity
By adding alt text, you ensure that your LinkedIn documents are accessible to visually impaired users. They can understand the context of the images in your document, thus creating a more inclusive professional networking platform.
Enhancing Professionalism
By taking the extra step to add alt text, you demonstrate attention to detail and commitment to inclusivity, enhancing your professional image.
Facilitating LinkedIn Searches
Like other platforms, LinkedIn utilizes alt text for better understanding and indexing images, possibly improving visibility in searches within the platform.
What Is Alternative Text In Canva?
Can I Use The Same Alt Text For Images?
Generally, it’s not advisable to use the same alt text for different images. The reason is simple:
Need for Contextual Accuracy
Alt text should accurately describe the specific image it’s attached to, providing the correct context. If two images are different, their alt texts should also be different to accurately describe what each image represents.
Using the same alt text for different images could lead to confusion and inaccuracies, compromising the accessibility you aim to provide. Therefore, always ensure your alt text is unique and accurately descriptive for each image.
What Is Alternative Text In Canva?
How Do You Add Alternative Text To An Image In Your Document?
The steps to add alternative text to an image may vary slightly depending on the software you’re using, but the process is generally straightforward. Here are the steps for some commonly used platforms:
In Microsoft Word
- Right-click on the image and select ‘Format Picture.’
- Navigate to the ‘Alt Text’ section, typically found in the sidebar.
- Fill in the ‘Description’ field with your alt text.
In Google Docs
- Right-click on the image and select ‘Alt Text.’
- Fill in the ‘Description’ field with your alt text.
In Canva
- Select the image and right click,
- In the drop-down menu, click on Alternative Text (a small icon looking like a person within a circle).
- Enter your alt text in the provided field.
What Is Alternative Text In Canva?
Why Do We Add An Image Alt Text And Text Wrapping In Our Website?
Alt text and text wrapping each play a unique role in enhancing the usability and accessibility of a website.
The Importance of Alt Text
- Enhancing Accessibility: Alt text is primarily used to provide visually impaired users with a description of the image content, enhancing the site’s accessibility.
- Boosting SEO: Search engines can’t interpret images but can read alt text, enabling them to understand the image’s context. This can boost the site’s SEO ranking.
The Role of Text Wrapping
Text wrapping refers to the way text flows or wraps around images or other objects on a webpage. Here’s why it’s important:
- Improving Readability: Text wrapping can make content more visually appealing and easier to read, thus enhancing user experience.
- Controlling Layout: It allows you to control the layout of your page more effectively, ensuring that your design intent is preserved.
What Is Alternative Text In Canva?
What Is The Best Alt Text?
The best alt text is concise, descriptive, and provides an accurate representation of the image. Here are some guidelines to craft the best alt text:
Be Descriptive
Clearly describe the content of the image. Avoid vague phrases like “image” or “photo.” If the image is a picture of a dog playing in the park, a good alt text might be “A golden retriever chasing a frisbee in a park.”
Be Concise
While you need to be descriptive, the alt text should also be relatively short. Aim for about 125 characters, as some screen readers cut off longer texts.
Include Relevant Keywords
If it’s appropriate and doesn’t feel forced, include relevant keywords in your alt text. This can enhance your site’s SEO performance.
Avoid Redundancies
Avoid phrases like “image of” or “picture of.” Screen readers already announce the presence of an image, so this information is redundant.
