There are a number of reasons why graphics may not load on a viewer's screen. By providing the viewer with an alternate text description of the image, you make him or her aware of the image's existence and content.

"ALT" tags provide alternate text descriptions for imagemaps, sound files and Java applet tags, as well as for images.

Use the "alt" attribute with the "img" tag to include alternate text for an image. For example, in the HTML tag below, "University of Delaware Green" is the alternate text for the image.

<img src="images/UDMall.gif" width="100" height="100" border="0" alt="University of Delaware Green">