Also called alternative text
Alt text is the written description of an image, read aloud by screen readers and displayed when the image fails to load.
Its first purpose is access: it is how someone using a screen reader knows what an image contains. Everything else — search engines reading it, browsers showing it on failure — follows from doing that job properly.
Good alt text describes the function of the image in its context. The same photograph needs a different description in a portfolio than in a tutorial, because what the reader needs to know differs.
Purely decorative images should carry empty alt text rather than a description, so screen readers skip them instead of announcing noise.
In practice
"Hand-thrown stoneware bowl with a matte oatmeal glaze" tells a reader what the shop sells; "IMG_4821" and "bowl photo" tell them nothing.
Common mistake
Stuffing keywords into alt text. It degrades the experience for the people it exists to serve, and search engines discount it.
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