Alt Text Best Practices for ADA Compliance

Alternative text is one of the most important accessibility features on any website. It provides text descriptions of images for users who cannot see them, whether due to visual impairment, slow internet connections, or broken image links.

Good alt text is concise, descriptive, and context-appropriate. For a product photo of a red leather jacket, good alt text might be "Red leather motorcycle jacket with silver zipper, front view" — not just "jacket" or "product image."

Decorative images should use empty alt attributes (alt="") to tell screen readers to skip them. This includes background textures, ornamental dividers, and images that purely duplicate adjacent text content.

Complex images like charts, graphs, and infographics need longer descriptions. Use a brief alt text with a reference to a more detailed description nearby, or use aria-describedby to link to a full text explanation.

Logo images should typically use the company name as alt text, not "logo" or "company logo." The alt text "Grow Wild Agency" is more useful than "Grow Wild Agency logo" because the context of a logo is typically apparent from placement.

Never use "image of" or "picture of" in alt text — screen readers already announce the element as an image. This is redundant and adds noise to the screen reader experience.