A screen reader hits an image without alt-text and skips right past it. Your gallery becomes invisible. Product photos disappear. Content you worked on — gone, from the perspective of anyone navigating your site with assistive technology.
This isn't an edge case. 24.1% of Kingman residents are over 65. Vision changes are a normal part of aging. Screen readers, high-contrast modes, and keyboard navigation aren't accessibility features for a small minority — they're how a significant chunk of your actual customer base interacts with the web.
Alt-text bridges your visual content to everyone who accesses information differently. It also feeds into SEO — search engines read alt-text to understand image content. And it shows up as visible text when images fail to load on a slow connection.
The fix is straightforward. The rules are simple. Most people just don't know them.
The Rules, Plainly Stated
Alt-text has four rules. They're not complicated — but most people either don't know them or don't apply them consistently.
Describe what's actually in the image. Be specific. Include context that matters to understanding the content. If the image shows a chart of mobile traffic data, say that — not "chart" or "graph."
Most screen readers truncate after 125 characters. If your alt-text is a paragraph, most of it disappears. Be specific, but be concise. If an image genuinely needs a long description, use a caption or the surrounding text instead.
Screen readers already announce that it's an image before reading the alt-text. Starting with "image of" means the user hears "image, image of..." — redundant and mildly annoying. Just describe the content directly.
File names help you organize folders. Descriptive file names help SEO. Alt-text describes content for screen readers and shows up when images fail to load. These are two different jobs — do both.
Good file name: kingman-mobile-traffic-2026.png
Good alt-text: Bar chart showing 87.4% of Kingman website visits occurring on mobile devices, May 2025 to May 2026
If an image is purely decorative — a background texture, a divider line, a repeated pattern — use an empty alt attribute: alt="". This tells the screen reader to skip it entirely, which is the right call. Only skip alt-text intentionally, never by accident.
Examples: Good vs. Bad
Theory is easy. Here's what it actually looks like in practice — using real image types you probably have on your site right now.
alt="Button Image"
Vague. Doesn't describe the button's purpose, label, or state. A screen reader user has no idea what this button does.
alt="Blue 'Contáctenos' button showing 30% text expansion for Spanish localization"
Specific, descriptive, conveys function and context. Someone who can't see the image still understands exactly what it shows and why it matters.
alt="Code screenshot"
Tells the reader nothing about what the code does, what file it's from, or why it's there. Completely useless context.
alt="LegalRouter.js snippet showing dynamic routing to legal documents based on detected language preference"
Explains the file, function, and purpose. Useful for screen reader users and for search engines trying to understand technical content.
alt="Chart"
What chart? Showing what? For what time period? The entire point of the data is lost.
alt="Bar chart showing 87.4% mobile, 9% desktop, and 3.6% tablet traffic for a Kingman business, May 2025 to May 2026"
The key finding is communicated. A screen reader user gets the actual data point — not just the knowledge that a chart exists.
alt="Product photo"
Which product? What color? What size? No purchasing decision can be made from this.
alt="Handmade turquoise ceramic mug with matte glaze and wide handle, 12oz capacity"
Material, color, finish, size — everything a customer needs to make a decision without seeing the image.
Where to Add It — Platform by Platform
Every platform handles alt-text slightly differently. Here's where to find the field on the most common ones.
alt attribute directly to the <img> tag.alt="Turquoise ceramic mug, 12oz">
Alt-Text Checker
Paste your alt-text and get instant feedback on what's working and what to fix.
Image Accessibility Checklist
Run through your site and check off each item as you verify it.
The SEO Bonus You Weren't Expecting
Alt-text isn't just for screen readers. Search engines use it to understand image content, which affects how your images appear in Google Image Search and how your pages rank for related queries.
A product page with descriptive alt-text on every image gives search engines more signal to work with than one with empty or generic alt-text. This is a small, consistent advantage that compounds over time.
It's not a silver bullet — but it's free, it's right, and it takes ten seconds per image. There's no reason not to do it.
The Test
"Close your eyes. Have someone read your alt-text out loud. Does the image make sense without seeing it?"
If yes — you're done. If no — rewrite it.
alt="" for decorative imagesMaking your site accessible isn't good practice.
It's how you reach your entire community.
Alt-text takes ten seconds per image. An accessibility audit takes a few hours. The alternative is a site that's invisible to a meaningful percentage of the people you're trying to serve — including a quarter of Kingman's population.
Want me to run a quick accessibility check on your site? I'll tell you exactly what's missing and what to fix first.