Issue
If you don’t provide good, contextually appropriate alternative (alt) text, the information conveyed by images in your site will be hidden from blind users.
Who’s affected
Screen reader users (blind), people with slow or weak internet (alt text is what shows up on the screen if the image is slow to load)
WCAG standard
Guideline 1.1: Text alternatives for non-text content
What to do
Don’t rely on the alt text that came with your image from your site’s media library. Every time you place an image, describe what you see in a way that fits how you’ve used the image. Keep it concise and don’t include information in the alt text that can’t be seen and understood from the picture. Try to keep the length to 200 characters or less.
- Posting on a social platform?: Check out Social Alt Text.
- Too much information to convey in a sentence?: Refer to Text description.
Recommended Resources
- WebAIM: Alternative Text
- American Federation for the Blind – Writing effective image descriptions or “Alt text”
- Image alt text viewer – Simple chrome extension that toggles on to display the alt text on a page
- How Blind People use Instagram (video)
- Authors over automation: 3 steps for better alt-text and image description in academic writing