Does Universe support alt text for images?

Yes!

• Alt Text has great benefits for visitors to your site who may have visual impairments, as it allows screen readers and other accessibility solutions to describe images to those who might not be able to visually process them.
• Alt Text also increments the amount of meta data that can be identified by web crawlers for search engines like Google, potentially increasing organic ranking in search results and leading to greater discoverability.

For images added to sites starting in mid-June 2023, alt text will be automatically generated by AI that will detect image content and provide a description.

Can I edit the alt text that is generated for my image?

Yes! You can add or edit alt text on the web or in the app. Here’s how:

💡 Tip: Here is a helpful guide for how to write good alt text tags: https://supercooldesign.co.uk/blog/how-to-write-good-alt-text

On the Universe Web App

1. Open the page with your desired image for editing
2. Click on the image
3. Click the text box under the heading ‘Image Description (Alt Text)’
4. Highlight and delete any text you do not want
5. Type your new text
6. Click anywhere outside of the editing pane to close
7. Click ‘Publish’ to save your changes

In the app

1. Open the page with your desired image for editing
2. Tap on the image
3. Select STYLE from the image options menu
4. Scroll to the Image Description option, and tap in the text field to add or edit alt text
5. After you've typed your text, click the Check icon to save changes
6. Click ‘Publish’ to make your changes live on the web

Do my previously-uploaded images have alt text generated for them?

Not at this time. However, we are working on backfilling the alt text and meta data for images already uploaded to sites built with Universe. Over 1 million (!!) sites have been built on Universe, and most have multiple images, so this may take some time. We thank you for your patience.

Please also be advised that alt text may not be generated for images on sites built with GUS. When our AI Designer builds your site, license-free images are sourced from Unsplash.com. You may add alt text (and attribution, if desired) for these images by following the steps above.

Please note that if you would like to add alt text sooner, you may manually update the alt text for images by loading your site at web.univer.se (please see above).