The ALT attribute is designed to be an alternative text description for images that are incorporated in the website design. ALT text displays before the image is loaded in the major browsers ALT is a required element for images and can only be used for image tags because its specific purpose is to describe images.

Benefits of ALT attribute:

# It gives a good Enhance the browsing experience of visitors with disabilities.

# Provide valuable information to all your visitors with descriptive link titles and descriptive text about other page elements.

# Increase your page's keyword density score and relevancy for your targeted keywords. (Calculate your page's keyword density with Page Primer and find out if you've used your keywords too little - or too often.)

HTML provides for 'Alt' attributes for image tags so that people who have images switched off, or are using a 'screen reader' program, can make some sense of the images on a Web page.

In the past, some webmasters have used the ALT text description as a sort of pop-up tooltip on images, to add funny captions to family photos, or advertise a sale on certain products. That was because the TITLE attribute wasn't widely supported. It is now and Netscape 6.x browsers interpret the W3C specifications rather strictly - ALT text no longer "pops up" when you run your mouse over an image. You have to use a TITLE attribute for that.