HTMLImageElement: alt property

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since ⁨July 2015⁩.

The alt property of the HTMLImageElement interface provides fallback (alternate) text to display when the image specified by the <img> element is not displayed, whether because of an error, because the user has disabled the loading of images, or because the image hasn't finished loading yet. It reflects the <img> element's alt content attribute.

There are important accessibility implications of providing appropriate alt text, and the requirements may differ based on the purpose of the image. See the HTML <img> reference for more information.

Value

A string.

Examples

Setting the alt attribute

js
const img = new Image();
img.src = "example.png";
img.alt = "An example picture";

Specifications

Specification
HTML
# dom-img-alt

Browser compatibility