ADA Alt Text Best Practices Strategies For Each Image Type

Ensuring Accessibility Through ADA Alt Text Best Practices

Ensuring accessibility for all users is not just a courtesy—it’s a necessity. With the rise of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) standards, implementing ADA alt text best practices has become a critical aspect of web design and content creation. From decorative and functional to informative, complex, and groups of images, you’ll learn how to craft meaningful, context-specific alt text that enhances user experience, ensures ADA compliance, and improves your site’s SEO performance.

Alt text, short for alternative text, serves as a critical component of web accessibility, offering textual descriptions of images for users who rely on screen readers due to visual impairments, which not only aids in navigating digital content but also plays a crucial role in providing a complete understanding of the web page’s visual elements. This functionality is not merely a feature but a fundamental aspect of web accessibility, as mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) guidelines for digital content.

Beyond accessibility, alt text is integral to search engine optimization (SEO). It allows search engines to index the image content, enhancing the website’s visibility in search results. It also serves as a fallback if the image fails to load, ensuring users still grasp its intended message or function.

Alt Text Best Practices for Decorative Images

Decorative images enrich the visual layout of a website, adding aesthetic value without directly contributing to the content’s informational substance. Below, we explore varied contexts in which decorative images are used and outline best practices for assigning alt text to ensure an accessible web experience for all users.

First, here are the ADA best practices for decorative image alt text:

Adopting Empty Alt Attributes: For images that purely serve decorative purposes, the best practice is to employ an empty alt attribute (alt=""). This method effectively communicates to assistive technologies that the image can be bypassed, thus streamlining the navigation for users relying on these tools.
Prioritizing CSS for Decorations: Instead of embedding decorative visuals directly within HTML through the <img> tag, leveraging CSS for such embellishments ensures that they are naturally omitted by screen readers, thereby enhancing site accessibility.
Discerning Decorative Versus Informative Roles: The distinction between whether an image is decorative or holds informative value is crucial and hinges on its contribution to the page’s content or narrative.

Best Practices Based on Scenario

Let’s discuss some scenarios and ADA best practices for decorative imagery alt text.

Mood Setting Through Imagery

Scenario: A panoramic skyline photo used to convey the bustling energy of a city in a travel blog.

Best Practice: When the image’s role is to set a mood or theme rather than to inform, it should be marked with alt="". If specific details in the image are crucial to the content, consider providing a descriptive alt text.

Visual Complements to Textual Content

Scenario: An icon of a leaf next to a section titled “Sustainability Efforts.”

Best Practice: If the icon is purely for visual emphasis and the section title is self-explanatory, assigning alt="" ensures the icon doesn’t distract assistive technology users.

Enhancing Clickable Areas with Imagery

Scenario: A small graphical arrow next to “Read More” links to increase the clickable area.

Best Practice: Such images should be accompanied by alt="" to avoid unnecessary screen reader focus, relying instead on the textual link for navigation.

Page Design Images

Scenario: Patterns or shapes used in the background or as section dividers within a webpage.

Best Practice: Utilize CSS where possible for these visual elements, or mark them with alt="" when using <img> tags to ensure they’re not read by screen readers.

Additional Considerations

Interactive Decorative Elements: For decorative elements that are part of interactive controls, ensure the controls themselves are adequately labeled with accessible text, focusing on their function over form.
Reevaluating Context: Always reevaluate an image’s role based on its context within the webpage. An image considered decorative in one setting may be informative in another, underscoring the importance of context in alt text decisions.

Remember, empty alt attributes mean that search engines will also skip over these images. Ensure that images containing important keywords or content for SEO purposes are correctly marked as informative and provided with relevant alt text.

Informative Images: Crafting Meaningful Alt Text

Informative images are pivotal in web content, elucidate concepts, complement narratives, and enhance understanding. They range from diagrams illustrating complex ideas to icons signifying specific actions. Crafting ADA-compliant alt text for these images ensures that all users can grasp their significance regardless of visual ability.

Here are some guiding principles for informative image alt text:

Conciseness and Clarity: Aim for alt text that succinctly describes the image’s conveyed information or concept, avoiding overly detailed or vague descriptions.
Contextual Relevance: Tailor alt text to the image’s role within the content, ensuring it complements the surrounding narrative or information.
Avoiding Redundancy: Ensure the alt text does not simply repeat information already provided in the text, but rather adds value or context.

Best Practices for Different Scenarios

Supplementing Information with Images

Scenario: A bicycle equipped with an LED light, accompanied by safety tips for night cycling.

Best Practice: Alt text, like “Bicycle with LED light for safe night cycling,” should complement the safety tips, adding a visual cue to the advice.

Conveying Information Succinctly

Scenario: An icon indicating the storage requirement to keep a product refrigerated.

Best Practice: The alt text should provide succinct information about the requirement, such as “Icon: Keep refrigerated,” directly conveying the necessary storage condition.

Eliciting Emotion or Impression

Scenario: An image showcasing a peaceful reading nook within a bookstore to convey its welcoming atmosphere.

Best Practice: The alt text, “Cozy reading nook in bookstore,” should capture the space’s warmth and inviting nature and aim to evoke a specific ambiance.

Labeling Information with Icons

Scenario: Email and physical address icons beside contact details.

Best Practice: The alt text should clearly label what each icon represents, such as “Email icon” and “Location icon,” helping users identify the type of information provided.

Indicating File Formats

Scenario: Icons denoting that an article is available in audio format and as a downloadable eBook.

Best Practice: Alt text should differentiate the formats, using phrases like “Audio format available” and “Download eBook version,” making it clear what options are available for accessing the content.

Additional Insights

Distinguishing Between Informative and Decorative: Continuously assess the image’s role, recognizing that what may be informative in one context could be decorative in another.
Labeling for Accessibility and SEO: While informative images enhance accessibility, their alt text can also support SEO. Ensure the alt text includes relevant keywords without sacrificing clarity or relevance.
Leveraging Long Descriptions for Complex Images: For images too detailed for brief alt text, consider using a long description link or adjacent detailed text, ensuring comprehensive accessibility.

Adhering to these best practices enables content creators to effectively communicate the informational value of images to all users, aligning with accessibility standards and enhancing the overall user experience.

Functional Images: Enabling User Interaction

Functional images serve a unique role on websites and applications. They act as interactive elements that initiate actions, like navigating to another page, submitting a form, or performing a specific function. Crafting effective alt text for these images is crucial for accessibility, ensuring all users understand the actions they can take, regardless of their ability to see the images.

Functional images include buttons, icons within links, and any visual element that triggers an action. The alt text for these images must focus on the action or outcome they facilitate rather than their appearance.

ADA Alt Text Best Practices for Functional Images

Action-Oriented Language: Use verbs that clearly indicate the action or result of interacting with the image, helping users predict what will happen when they activate the control.
Brevity and Directness: Keep the alt text concise, directly linking the description to the function without unnecessary detail.
Avoid Visual Descriptions: Users need to know what an image does, not what it looks like. Focus on function over form.