When another charge is placed in this field it feels a force. So the electric field contains the potential for producing a force. Wiggle one charge and the other one responds to the wiggles after a time delay. The further apart the charges are, the longer the time it takes for the wiggles to go from one charge to the other. The wiggles in this model are electromagnetic radiation one form of which is light.
Light is made by accelerating charges.
And Charges are accelerated by light. Which means that when light hits matter, which is made of atoms which are made of charged particles, the charges in the matter wiggle and send out light. The light sent out by matter adds to the incoming light, the resulting sum travels slower than the original light, and is the source of the slowing of the speed of light in matter that produces the index of refraction. Light is a form of electromagnetic radiation. These are all waves in the electric field, they have different frequencies and wavelengths.