Every image on your website can carry a short written description, called alt text (short for "alternative text"). Most visitors never see it. But for someone who is blind and uses a screen reader (software that reads the screen aloud), that description is the image. A good one tells them what a sighted visitor gets at a glance. A missing or careless one leaves a gap, or worse, a string of nonsense such as "IMG_4032.jpg". This article explains who uses image descriptions, gives you a simple way to decide what to write, and shows many good and bad examples you can copy. It ends with where to find the description field in the most common site builders.
What alt text is and who uses it
Alt text is a piece of text stored with an image in the page’s code. The browser does not show it on screen, but other tools use it:
- Screen reader users. People who are blind or have low vision hear the description read aloud when they reach the image.
- People on slow or limited connections. When an image fails to load, many browsers show the description in its place.
- People who turn images off to save data or reduce distraction.
- Search engines. Google says it uses alt text, together with the image and the text around it, to understand what an image shows. See Google’s image guidelines.
Missing descriptions are one of the most common problems on the web. In the WebAIM Million 2026, an automatic check of one million home pages, 53.1% of pages had images without alt text. The good news: you do not need a developer for this. In most site builders you can add or improve a description yourself in a minute.
Decide first: what is this image for?
Before you write anything, ask what the image does on this page. The W3C, the organisation behind the web’s standards, publishes an alt decision tree built on exactly that question. Here is a simplified version.
- Does the image show text? Then the description repeats that text.
- Is it a link or a button? Then describe where it goes or what it does, not what it looks like.
- Does it add information to the page? Then describe that information in a short sentence.
- Does it show complex information, such as a chart or map? Then give a short description and put the full information in text nearby.
- Is it only decoration, or does the text next to it already say the same? Then give it an empty description, so screen readers skip it.
The same photo can need a different description on different pages. A photo of a beach is decoration on a blog post about time management, and essential information on the booking page of a beach house.
Informative images: say what matters
Most images on a small business site are informative: product photos, photos of your premises, your team, your work. Describe what a visitor needs to know, as you would to a friend on the phone.
Product photos in a webshop
A shopper cannot pick up the product. The photo answers questions: what colour, what shape, what does it look like in use. Your description should answer the same questions.
- Bad: "product1.jpg"
- Bad: "Mug"
- Bad: "Best mug buy mug cheap ceramic mug gift mug coffee mug"
- Good: "Handmade ceramic mug in sea green, with a speckled glaze and a wide handle"
If your shop shows several photos of one product, give each one its own description: "The same mug from above, showing the unglazed rim", "The mug held in two hands, for size". Repeating the product name five times tells a listener nothing new.
A team photo
- Bad: "Team"
- Bad: "Group of people smiling"
- Good: "Our five-person team in front of the workshop, with Lotte, the founder, in the middle"
On an "About us" page, who is in the photo matters. On a careers page, the mood might matter more: "The team having lunch together at a long table in the garden".
A photo that sets the scene
A restaurant’s photo of its terrace is information for someone deciding where to eat: "Sunny terrace with eight tables under a large plane tree". The same kind of photo as a background behind a heading is usually decoration.
Functional images: logos, icons and buttons
When an image is a link or a button, the description is its name. A screen reader announces it as "link" or "button" followed by your text, so the text must say what happens when you activate it.
- Logo linking to the home page. Bad: "Logo". Bad: "Green leaf logo". Good: "Bakery Verbeke, home page", or just "Bakery Verbeke, home". People know that a logo in the header goes to the home page; they need the company name.
- Magnifying glass icon on a search button. Bad: "Magnifying glass". Good: "Search".
- Social media icons. Bad: "Instagram icon". Good: "Bakery Verbeke on Instagram".
- A printer icon. Bad: "Printer". Good: "Print this recipe".
If the image sits inside a link that already has visible text, such as a product card with a photo and the product name, the photo can often get an empty description, so the name is not read twice. Our repair guide on link texts explains why links need a clear name.
Images of text, decoration and complex images
Images of text
A banner that says "Summer sale, 20% off everything until 31 August" is text, even when it is a picture. The description must contain the same words: "Summer sale, 20% off everything until 31 August". Better still, put the text on the page as real text over the image. Real text can be enlarged, translated and found by search engines, and it stays sharp on every screen.
Decorative images
Decoration includes background textures, dividing lines, abstract shapes and stock photos that only set a mood. These get an empty description. In code that is alt="", with nothing between the quotes. This is different from leaving the description out entirely: without any alt, some screen readers read out the file name instead, which is exactly what you want to avoid.
Charts, diagrams and maps
A chart holds too much for one short description. Give it two parts:
- A short description that says what kind of chart it is and its main message: "Bar chart: online orders doubled between 2024 and 2026".
- The full information as text near the chart, such as a short paragraph or a table with the numbers.
The text version helps far more people than screen reader users. Many readers find a sentence like "Orders rose from 1,200 in 2024 to 2,450 in 2026" easier to take in than bars.
Length, tone and what not to do
There is no strict maximum, but short descriptions work best. Listeners cannot skim, and a screen reader reads the whole thing without pausing. Aim for one sentence, often fewer than 15 words. Some builders set their own limits: Shopify allows up to 512 characters but recommends 125 or fewer, and Squarespace allows 250.
Tips for tone:
- Write in the language of the page, in plain words.
- Start with the most important part. "Red winter coat with a hood" beats "A coat, which is red, made for winter and with a hood".
- Mention the type of image only when it matters: "Oil painting of the harbour", "Screenshot of the order form", "Hand-drawn map".
What to avoid:
- "Image of" or "picture of". The screen reader already announces it as an image, so the listener hears "image, image of a mug".
- Keyword stuffing. Lists of search terms are tiring to hear and, according to Google, can make your site look like spam. Google’s own example: "puppy dog baby dog pup pups puppies" is bad, "Dalmatian puppy playing fetch" is best.
- File names and camera codes such as "DSC_0045" or "hero-banner-final-v2".
- Repeating the caption or nearby text word for word. If a caption below the photo already says "Lotte in her workshop", the description can add something else or be empty.
- Guessing or inventing. If a tool wrote a description for you, check it. Automatic descriptions often miss what matters, like who someone is.
Where to add descriptions in your site builder
Menu names change from time to time, so look for a field called "Alt text", "Alternative text" or "Image description". These are the current places in the most common tools.
- WordPress. Select the image block. In the settings panel on the right, under the image settings, type in the "Alternative text" field. You can also add it in the Media Library: open an image and fill in "Alternative Text" in the Attachment details.
- Shopify. For product photos: go to Products, open a product, click a photo to open the media preview, choose "Add alt text", type and save, as described in Shopify’s help. Images in your theme have their own field in the theme editor, under the image setting.
- Wix. In the editor, click the image, click the Settings icon and fill in "What’s in the image?". For galleries, open Manage Media and select each image. To mark an image as decorative, Wix offers a checkbox in its Accessibility Wizard. See Wix’s help on images.
- Squarespace. Edit the image block and type in the "Image alt text" field on the Content tab. Squarespace’s help page explains the places for galleries and other layouts.
- AI builders such as Lovable, Bolt and v0. There is no form field: you ask in the chat. A useful prompt is: "List every image on this page with its current alt text. Suggest a better description for each, based on what it shows and why it is there. Mark decorative images for an empty alt. Wait for my approval before changing anything." Our guide for AI builders has more ready-made prompts.
Several of these tools can now suggest descriptions with AI. That can save time, but treat each suggestion as a draft: the tool sees pixels, not your purpose.
How ibin helps you find weak descriptions
An automatic check can find images that have no description at all, and links or buttons made of an image without a name. ibin shows each one with a close-up picture of where it is on the page and a repair guide for image descriptions.
What an automatic check cannot do is judge whether a description is _right_. "Mug" passes every automatic test. That is why ibin offers an optional second look from AI. It looks at the images and their descriptions and rates how well they fit on a scale from 1 to 5, together with link texts, keyboard use and clear language. Treat those ratings as leads: they point you to the images worth a closer look, and you make the final call. Automatic checks find roughly a third to half of all accessibility problems, so a person still needs to review the rest.
Check your image descriptions
Check a page for free with ibin to see which images have no description, then ask for the second look to find descriptions that need work. Start with your home page and your best-selling products. If you sign in, you can check up to 200 pages of the same site, and the repair guides explain each fix step by step.
See how your own site does
Check a page for free, without an account. You get a plain list of what to fix first, with pictures of where each problem is.
