Alt
The Alternative Right, commonly abbreviated as the alt-right, is a decentralized, primarily internet-based political ideology and movement that emerged in the United States in the late 2000s, seeking to supplant mainstream conservatism with explicit advocacy for white ethnic interests, racial realism, and opposition to mass immigration, multiculturalism, and egalitarian universalism.[1] The term was coined by Richard Bertrand Spencer in 2010 to describe a new intellectual current distinct from neoconservatism and paleoconservatism, focusing instead on human biodiversity, identitarian nationalism, and critiques of institutional power structures perceived as hostile to European-descended populations.[2][3] The movement gained traction through anonymous online forums, meme warfare, and alternative media platforms, influencing broader discourse on identity politics during the 2016 U.S. presidential election by aligning with Donald Trump's campaign against establishment globalism, though Trump publicly rejected its endorsements.[2] Its core tenets include recognition of innate group differences in intelligence and behavior across races—drawing on empirical data from fields like psychometrics—and a belief that Western civilization's survival requires prioritizing demographic preservation over civic nationalism.[4] Proponents argue these positions stem from causal analysis of historical patterns, such as divergent societal outcomes and genetic studies, rather than hatred, while critics, often from advocacy organizations with documented ideological leanings, frame it uniformly as supremacist or extremist without engaging the underlying data.[5][4] Key figures like Spencer, through organizations such as the National Policy Institute, aimed to intellectualize these ideas, but the alt-right's defining event was the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which amplified media scrutiny, led to widespread deplatforming by tech companies, and precipitated internal fractures between more moderate identitarians and overt extremists.[2] By the late 2010s, overt alt-right activity declined amid legal actions, financial constraints, and cultural backlash, though its conceptual challenges to colorblind ideology persist in dissident right circles, underscoring tensions between empirical observations of group disparities and institutional commitments to narrative-driven equality.[6]Computing and technology
Keyboard and input methods
The Alt key functions as a modifier on computer keyboards, enabling alternative interpretations of other keys to access secondary commands, special characters, or menu options in operating systems and applications.[7] Its name derives from "alternate," reflecting its role in providing non-default key behaviors without requiring additional hardware.[7] Introduced as a standard feature on IBM PC-compatible keyboards in the early 1980s, the Alt key integrated with the system's BIOS to support extended input methods, such as holding Alt while entering decimal codes on the numeric keypad to produce characters from the active code page, including those absent from the physical keyboard layout.[8] This capability addressed limitations in early 8-bit character sets like Code Page 437, allowing direct insertion of symbols via sequences like Alt+1 for the smiley face ☺ (code 1).[8] By the mid-1980s, as personal computing proliferated, Alt combinations standardized for productivity tasks, exemplified by Alt+Tab for window switching in MS-DOS environments and later graphical interfaces.[9] In application-specific contexts, Alt serves as a prefix for keyboard shortcuts; for instance, Alt+F4 to terminate the active window traces to IBM's Common User Access guidelines from 1987, which aimed to unify interface behaviors across software.[10] These shortcuts leverage the key's modifier status to invoke menus or actions, often mapped to the first letter of commands (e.g., Alt+F for File menu), enhancing efficiency in text-based and GUI systems alike.[10] Most modern keyboards include both a left Alt and a right Alt key, positioned symmetrically beside the spacebar, though their behaviors can differ by layout and locale.[11] The right Alt, frequently unmodified in U.S. English layouts, mirrors the left for compatibility, but in international variants like AZERTY or QWERTZ, it reconfigures as AltGr to generate third-level characters—such as € via AltGr+E on a standard European keycap—essential for languages requiring diacritics or currency symbols.[12] AltGr originated to extend input for non-ASCII needs in text-mode interfaces, including early box-drawing pseudographics, and remains integral to Unicode-compliant systems for dead-key compositions and layout-specific mappings.[13][12]Web and media attributes
Thealt attribute in HTML specifies alternative text for elements such as <img>, providing a fallback textual description when the primary content fails to load or is inaccessible to users relying on assistive technologies like screen readers.[14] Short for "alternative," it conveys the purpose or content of the media, supporting standards like WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion 1.1.1 (Non-text Content), which mandates text alternatives for non-text elements to ensure perceivability for users with visual impairments.[15] Empirical data from accessibility audits indicate substantial non-compliance; for instance, WebAIM's 2025 analysis of top million home pages found 18.5% of images lacking alt text (excluding empty attributes), with an average of 11 such images per page, underscoring how inadequate implementation hinders screen reader navigation and content comprehension.[16]
Formally defined in HTML 2.0 (RFC 1866, November 1995), the attribute originated to address limitations in text-based browsers and early web rendering, evolving to prioritize semantic equivalence over mere placeholders. In practice, effective alt text is concise yet descriptive, focusing on functional or contextual details rather than exhaustive visual replication, as verbose or irrelevant descriptions can overwhelm users of assistive devices. Misuse, such as omitting alt entirely or using placeholders like "image," violates accessibility guidelines and reduces utility for search engines indexing image semantics, though primary benefits accrue to the estimated 2.2 billion people worldwide with vision impairments per WHO data.
HTML5 refinements emphasize context-specific usage: meaningful text for informative images, empty strings (alt="") for purely decorative ones to avoid redundant announcements, and integration with ARIA attributes like aria-labelledby for complex cases where alt alone suffices minimally.[17] The WHATWG HTML Living Standard mandates non-empty alt for content-bearing images, reinforcing compliance over stylistic omissions, while WCAG techniques recommend avoiding keyword stuffing to maintain authenticity.[18] Persistent errors persist despite these updates; WebAIM reports show 55.5% of audited pages with missing alt for key images in recent evaluations, attributable to developer oversight rather than technical barriers.[16]