Write alt text for artwork in context
Choose image alternatives by the purpose of an artwork image, its surrounding text, and the reader's task, using concise examples without inventing visual details or replacing needed long descriptions.
Describe the image's purpose in context
An artwork image can serve several purposes: identify a work, explain a technique, support a visual comparison, or simply decorate a page. Its alternative text should respond to that purpose. Begin with what information the image contributes in this location and what the surrounding caption already communicates, rather than applying one description everywhere.
Separate alternatives from attribution
For a fictional workshop image showing folded paper layers, describe the feature relevant to the technique. Keep attribution or historical facts in ordinary text when readers need them. If the image acts as a link, its accessible name should communicate the destination. A complex visual explanation may need an adjacent longer description as well. Place the proposed solution beside a simpler alternative and ask what extra work each one creates. Count decisions the person must make, rather than decorative elements on the canvas. A useful control explains its scope before activation and its result afterward. If the design depends on someone remembering an instruction from a previous screen, move that instruction closer to the decision or remove the dependency.
Describe one sculpture in three settings
Write alternatives for the same invented paper sculpture in three contexts: a collection thumbnail, a lesson about overlapping planes, and a purely decorative banner. In the lesson, identify the visible relationship that supports the teaching point. Do not invent colors, materials, or intent that the supplied image and verified context do not establish. Keep a record of the starting conditions alongside the prototype. The same action can be easy with a familiar record and confusing with an incomplete one. Choose the record deliberately, then describe what would count as completion. Show the state immediately after the action as carefully as the initial view. A prototype that ends at the click cannot answer whether the person understands the result.
Avoid redundancy and invented detail
Overlong alternatives can bury the useful distinction, while filenames and phrases such as image of artwork often omit it entirely. Repeating a nearby caption word for word can create redundant reading. Decorative treatment should be a deliberate contextual choice, not a shortcut for an informative image whose description is difficult to write. Check whether a local fix creates a problem elsewhere. A longer label may clarify one choice but become clipped in another view; an extra confirmation may protect a destructive action but obstruct routine work. Carry the revision through the full example and its alternate route. Document the tradeoff explicitly so the next person modifying the design understands which behavior the change was intended to protect.
Read the page with images unavailable
Review the page by reading its text in order with the images unavailable. Ask what important information has disappeared and whether the alternatives supply it at the right place. Then inspect the actual image to verify every descriptive detail. The goal is equivalent purpose in context, with a route to fuller explanation where a short alternative cannot carry the lesson.
Worked decision
In a lesson about overlapping planes, describe the layered relationship that teaches the point; keep the work's attribution in readable surrounding text.
References & further reading
Examples and exercises in this guide are original teaching scenarios.
