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Images - Accessibility Quick Guide

Images must have accurate and meaningful text alternatives for screen reader users. Image alt text is also determined based on the usage and function of the image. Image alt text should not be redundant or overly verbose.

Short text alternative decision tree Image from Lecture on Images Part 3: How to Write Short Text Alternatives
Description of alt text decision tree image.

Guidance

  1. All IMG elements MUST have an alt attribute.
  2. Decorative images must be ignored by the screen reader with alt="".
  3. Informative images must have a meaningful text alternative.
  4. Decorative images should be hidden with alt="" if they have adjacent visible alt text.
  5. Image alt text MUST match exactly the visible text shown in the image in the correct reading order.
  6. Clickable images must have meaningful alt text that serves as the link text spoken to screen reader users.
  7. Links that contain an image and text must be a single link rather than two links.
  8. Links that contain an image and text must not speak a repetitive alt text to screen reader users.
  9. IMG elements must not have the word "Image" inside their alt attribute value. (or else it says "Image, Image").

Bad Example

Decorative

Green Flower Curved Line Decoration

Email Icon Image Email me at firstname@thisdomain.com

Informative

World Wide Web Consortium

Clickable

Email Icon

Email Icon Email Us

W3C Homepage

Good Example

Decorative

Email me at firstname@thisdomain.com

Informative

W3C®

W3C® World Wide Web Consortium

Clickable

Email Us

W3C®

Email Us

W3C Homepage