All's not what it seems

ALT(ernative)

BBC headline: “can we stop being tricked into subscriptions?” accompanied by an image of a woman looking at an electronic tablet device, captioned “Woman looking at tablet”
The caption states Woman looking at tablet. The IMG tag includes an ALT attribute: alt="Woman looking at tablet".

In web code, HTML, objects on the page are represented by tags which have attributes that describe the object and its position. An image is represented with the IMG tag, the ALT attribute of which offers a description of the image. It's an accessibility feature; a visual placeholder for devices that cannot display images, or an audible cue to users who cannot see them. It may be something as simple as woman looking at tablet.

The image, as shown on the page, may be accompanied by a caption. The caption will describe the relevance of the image in relation to the article that it's being used to illustrate, particularly if it's a stock image. Unless an image is specific to the subject of an article, its caption shouldn't simply describe its content in the same manner as the ALT attribute, it should add context for the reader.

For example, a stock photo of a woman looking at a tablet may be used to illustrate an article about automated subscription renewals, with a caption along the lines of Consumers are concerned about the lack of transparency in subscription renewals. In this case, the caption allows the reader to understand what the photo is trying to convey.

The ALT text to the screenshot image shown in this post is:

alt="BBC headline: “can we stop being tricked into subscriptions?” accompanied by an image of a woman looking at an electronic tablet device, captioned “Woman looking at tablet”"

Now, according to the photo's revised caption, People are worried about auto enrolment. Fortunately, for those of us who treasure transparency in reporting, the Wayback Machine doubles as the Hasmyback Machine.