Water Signs; A story of love and renewal; by Daria DiGiovanni

Introduction

Captions are one of the most important parts of your website. They are the first thing people see when they visit your site, and they are the only thing they will see if they use a screen reader.

If you don’t have captions on your images, you are violating the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, which is the most widely accepted set of guidelines for making websites accessible to people with disabilities.

What is a Caption?

A caption is a short description of an image that appears below the image. Captions are used to describe the image to people who are visually impaired, to help them understand what the image is about. They can also be used to provide additional information about the image, such as the name of the person who took the picture, the location where the picture was taken, or any other information that is relevant to the image or the subject matter of the picture.

Why Should You Write Captions for Your Images

There are many reasons why you should write a caption for each of your images.

The first and most important reason is that you are making your website more accessible for people with visual impairments. If your website is not accessible to them, they will not be able to use it, which means that they will be missing out on a lot of information that they could be getting from your website if it was accessible.

If you are unsure whether or not your site is accessible, the best way to find out is to use [WebAIM’s accessibility checker](/webaim/tools/accessibility-checker/). It will tell you if your site violates any of the WCAG guidelines, and if it does, it will give you a list of things that you can do to make your site more accessible.

If your site does not pass the accessibility check, you will need to make some changes to make it accessible. There are many ways to do this, but the most common way is to add captions to your images so that they can be read by people who use screen readers.

If you have images on your website that are not captioned.

How to Write Good Captions

Writing captions is not difficult, but it does require a little bit of practice. The most important thing to keep in mind is that captions should be short and to the point. They should be written in the third person, and should not include any unnecessary information.