What is HTML(Hypertext Markup Language)?
Let's break down the acronym, Hypertext - Hypertext is the text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references to other text and associated graphic material that the reader can immediately access.
Markup language - Data included in an electronic document is distinct from the document's content in that it is typically not included in representations of the document for end-users, for example on paper or a computer screen, or in an audio stream
It can be deduced that HTML is a language that is used to display data on a computer that is not exactly seen as written
HTML provides the basic structure of sites, enhanced and modified by other technologies like CSS and JavaScript. Without it there'd be no websites
Why is HTML a must?
Unlike programming languages, HTML allows content on a webpage/website to be labelled using tags also known as elements.
Without this, a text would be indistinguishable from its header or subheader, a link would be indistinguishable.
There would be a lot of chaos
The tags have intuitive names such as section - a part of the website, header, li - lists, p - paragraphs, etc.
This article is possible and properly distinguished because of HTML tags. This brings us to semantic and non-semantic tags
Semantic tags pass a special meaning(data) to the browser
We have non-semantic tags such as div(container) and span(you guessed right, a span literally)
And then we have semantic tags such as form, header, section, img(image), table, article
As you may have guessed these tags tell the what their function is which aids accessibility(another reason for HTML)
Accessibility in web design is when both the able and disabled can have access to a website not regarding the disability
One way these tags help is with Screen readers, these semantic tags help screen readers describe the website better
HTML also allows for attributes to these semantic tags for extra information to be passed, for instance, image tags(img) have an alt attribute that specifies an alternate text for an area, if the image can not be displayed. It also is what is described by screenreaders
Maybe in a second part, I'd go deeper into these things
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