Image alt attribute best practices

Question

What exactly is the intended use of the alt attribute on tags?

Should it describe the image, or should it provide meaningful re

Answer 1

The "alt" attribute is an alternative (textual) representation of the semantics of the image. This is not just used for images that can't load: it's also used for screen-readers or text-only browsers.

In your particular case, including the alt-text kind of depends on whether you think it's important to note that the page contains a picture of the person or not. If it's a purely visual item, you may not want any alt-text. If it's also used as a link of some sort, you probably do want some alt-text so that a person using a screen-reader has some clue about what following the link might do.