Reviewed October 21, 2026

Alt text audits: the gaps that show up again and again

Alt text fails in predictable patterns across almost every site. The five recurring gaps an audit finds, how to judge quality beyond presence, and a triage order for fixing backlogs.

Presence is not quality

Most alt text audits start with a simple count and find the count misleading. The images technically have alt attributes, but the text inside is a filename, a repeated generic word like image, or a paragraph of keyword stuffed description nobody would say aloud. Presence satisfies a checker. It does not satisfy the screen reader user listening to it.

A useful audit judges alt text against purpose. The question for each image is what a sighted user learns from it in context, and whether the alternative delivers that same information at that same point in the page. That framing immediately exposes why one global rule, describe everything or decorate nothing, fails in both directions.

The five gaps that recur everywhere

First, meaningful images with empty alt, product angles, chart data, and instructional photos silenced as if decorative. Second, decorative images with chatty alt, borders and spacers announcing themselves and polluting the reading flow. Third, filename alt, where the content management system quietly inserts upload names nobody edited afterward.

Fourth, redundant alt that repeats the adjacent caption or heading word for word, so screen reader users hear everything twice. Fifth, complex images, charts, diagrams, and infographics, squeezed into a short alt that cannot carry them, when they needed a long description or a data table nearby. Nearly every backlog sorts into these five buckets.

Judging charts and complex images fairly

A chart compressed into alt text that says sales chart helps no one. The standard that works is a short alt naming what the chart shows, plus the actual data or a summary of the trend in the page text, a table, or an expandable description. If the insight matters to sighted readers, it matters equally and must exist as text somewhere reachable.

Screenshots in support and documentation content fail similarly. Alt that says screenshot of settings misses the setting value the reader needs. Write the alt as the instruction the image illustrates, and keep the surrounding steps complete without the image, so the article works for readers who never perceive it.

Triaging a backlog without boiling the ocean

Fix by traffic and task criticality, not by upload date. Product images, pricing and plan comparison graphics, and anything inside checkout or signup flows come first. Blog hero images and editorial photography follow. Purely decorative material mostly needs its alt emptied correctly, which is fast work once identified.

Build the fix into the workflow or the backlog regrows. Add alt text guidance and a required field review at upload, spot check new content monthly, and treat vendor and agency image deliveries as incomplete without alternatives. Audits find the same five gaps repeatedly in organizations that fix pages but never fix the process producing them.

Frequently asked questions

How long should alt text be?

Long enough to convey the image purpose in context and no longer. Most images need a phrase or a sentence or two. If you find yourself writing paragraphs, the image is probably complex and deserves a short alt plus a longer description or data table in the page itself.

When should an image have empty alt text?

When it is purely decorative or its information is fully repeated in adjacent text. Empty alt, written as alt with nothing in it, tells screen readers to skip the image entirely, which is the correct and kind outcome for flourishes that carry no information.

Can AI generated alt text pass an audit?

It can draft, but unreviewed AI alt frequently describes the image generically, invents details, and misses the page context that determines what matters. Audits that sample quality rather than presence will catch it. Human review of AI drafts is a reasonable workflow. Publishing them blind is not.

What alt text mistake is most damaging?

Meaningful images silenced with empty alt inside a task flow, such as an unlabeled diagram in checkout or instructions. It blocks completion rather than merely annoying. In triage, images that guard a transaction or a required step always outrank editorial images.