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Image alt text: how to write it, and how to find what's missing
Alt text is how screen-reader users experience your images. Missing and meaningless alt text is one of the most common (and most citable) accessibility failures.
alt attributes are trivially detectable at scale, so automated legal scanners flag them instantly. On image-heavy sites (ecommerce, restaurants, portfolios) a single template bug can leave thousands of images without alt text.How to write good alt text
- Describe the content and function, not the fact it's an image. "Red suede running shoe, side view" beats "shoe.jpg".
- Keep it concise: a sentence or so. The longer story belongs in surrounding text, not the alt.
- Don't start with "image of": screen readers already announce it as an image.
- Decorative images get
alt="": an empty (but present) alt tells assistive tech to skip it. Omitting the attribute entirely is the failure. - Functional images (a logo that links home, an icon button) describe the action: "AdaClear home", not "shield icon".
- Images of text: avoid them; if unavoidable, the alt must contain the exact text.
Alt text on ecommerce and restaurant sites
Product and food photos are the highest-volume alt-text problem. See our ecommerce accessibility and restaurant accessibility guides for the template-repeats-everywhere risk.
Find every missing alt across your site
You can't eyeball thousands of images. AdaClear's WCAG scan lists every image missing a text alternative (and flags likely-meaningless alt like filenames), so you can fix them at the template level. It's one of the fastest score improvements, alongside color contrast, both on the WCAG checklist. Scan free below.
Enter your site for an instant ADA/WCAG scan: score + top issues. No overlay, no signup.