Images have alt text
What we check
We look at the images in the content of your home page and each sampled page — not the ones in the header, navigation, sidebar, or footer, so your logo doesn’t count — and count how many have an alt attribute. An empty alt="" says “decorative” on purpose, and passes. Images marked as presentation only, and tiny images embedded in the page itself, are left out.
The images from all the pages are pooled, and the score is the fraction with alt text, never lower than 0.3 if any image has it. With fewer than three images, there’s too little to judge, and the check is skipped. The report names the pages with missing alt text.
Why it matters
Alt text is how an image explains itself to anything that can’t see it: a screen reader, and a bot. When an assistant reads a page with a product photo or a chart, the alt text is all it knows about that picture. Without it, the image is a gap.
Writing alt text also forces a useful question: does this image say something, or is it decoration? Both answers are fine, as long as the page says which.
How to pass
- For each image that carries meaning, write an alt that says what it shows, in a short sentence:
<img src="/team.jpg" alt="The four founders outside the studio in Portland"> - For decorative images — background textures, dividers, flourishes — use an empty alt, so readers skip them:
<img src="/swirl.svg" alt=""> - In most site builders and in WordPress, there’s an alt text field on each image; fill it in when you upload.