Image Alt Text: WCAG Rules and Best Practices
The article discusses the importance of alt text for images in accordance with WCAG guidelines. It emphasizes that alt text should provide context rather than just describe the image. Additionally, it outlines different types of images and best practices for writing effective alt text.
- ▪Alt text is essential for accessibility, allowing screen readers to describe images to visually impaired users.
- ▪There are four types of images: informative, decorative, functional, and complex, each requiring different approaches to alt text.
- ▪Best practices include avoiding phrases like 'image of' and ensuring that alt text serves the user rather than search engines.
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Record
| Original publisher | DEV.to (Top) |
| Canonical URL | https://dev.to/lawebe/image-alt-text-wcag-rules-and-best-practices-49l8 |
| Publication time | Fri, 22 May 2026 07:21:09 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-22T07:32:00.884Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-22T07:32:00.884Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | 5A5f0waxU4qW |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
try { if(localStorage) { let currentUser = localStorage.getItem('current_user'); if (currentUser) { currentUser = JSON.parse(currentUser); if (currentUser.id === 3940661) { document.getElementById('article-show-container').classList.add('current-user-is-article-author'); } } } } catch (e) { console.error(e); } Romain Posted on May 22 • Originally published at access-proof.com Image Alt Text: WCAG Rules and Best Practices #a11y #wcag Alt text (the alt attribute on images) is how screen readers describe pictures to people who cannot see them. It satisfies WCAG 1.1.1 Non-text Content (Level A) — the most fundamental accessibility rule. Getting it right is mostly about context, not description.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at DEV.to (Top).
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