What are alternative texts and why are they indispensable
Alternative texts (or alt texts) are text descriptions associated with images. They ensure accessibility for visually impaired persons using screen readers to interpret the content and improve the user experience in cases where images are not loaded.
Let us look at a typical example: the contact is looking at your email with blocked images. Instead of the images, he displays the associated alternative text.
That is, if you have handled the alternative texts well. Imagine how your your email if they were not there or, worse, if they were out of context, it would be hardly understandable.
Using accurate and relevant alternative texts helps to reach a wider audience and contributes to meeting accessibility standards, making communications more inclusive and readable for all.
An editor for alternative image texts
Find the magnews editor for alternative texts in the email designer, where an accessibility icon appears whenever an email communication includes images .
This provides direct access to the page that allows you to immediately check the list of images used in the email and insert or edit alternative texts simultaneously.
Accessibility Assistant: creativity and AI meet
Accessibility Assistant is one of Magnews Q's assistants: the AI analyses the images in the email communication and automatically generates coherent and relevant alternative texts.
Use the Accessibility Assistant button to get started.
You can choose to use the option to also intervene on existing descriptions to give uniformity to the texts. By using 'Generate descriptions', magnews will automatically fill each alternative text with a description of the corresponding image.
The advantages of Accessibility Assistant
- It automatically scans all images to generate quality alternative texts.
- It saves you time, streamlining a crucial task and allowing you to concentrate on other aspects of communication, especially if your emails include many images.
- It improves the readability of your emails, even for those who cannot view images, e.g. in clients that block them.
- It helps you make your communications compliant with accessibility standards, which are increasingly relevant in regulatory and reputational terms.
Another help from magnews: preview with blocked images
If you access the preview of your email, on the left-hand side of the window, magnews provides you with some functionalities, easily accessible from the related icons:
- Mobile / desktop: to verify the email in the two different types of devices.
- Dark mode: to display the email as contacts that use this mode.
- Blocked images: to see the email as seen by contacts that do not download images.