Images play an important role on our website, enhancing the visual design and conveying the place of CMU. But when images are missing alternative (alt) text it can negatively impact the experience of those using the site. Alternative text is used by screen readers to help visually-impaired users understand your non-text content and is also displayed on screen if an image does not load.
Best practices for alt text:
- Don't use "photo of" since that is automatically added by screen readers.
- Be descriptive of what and/or who is in the photo.
- Use correct grammar.
- It is best to NOT have images with text. If your image does have text it should be included in the alt text.
See the Accessibility: Image Alt text best practices article from Siteimprove for more detail and examples.
Issue: Images without text alternative
Proper alternative text should be included for all images on the site. There are actually very few of these issues on the site due to how Cascade inserts images. If an image is decorative – it does not have meaning or purpose within the content – then alt text is not required but it does need to be marked as a decorative image in Cascade.
Potential Issue: Image file name is not an appropriate text alternative
When inserting an image, Cascade populates the alt text field with the file name of the image. A file name is not appropriate alternative text to use for an image as it is likely not actually descriptive, and it includes unnecessary characters as well as the file extension (eg, .jpg). Siteimprove shows this as a “Potential Issue” needing review but it should be updated in all cases.
Finding and fixing errors
These issues have been added to the CMU Website Update Dashboard in Siteimprove. Log in to see if there are any occurrences on your site(s). The fix for both of these issues is to edit the image in Cascade to add or update the alternative text.
Need further instruction? Visit our information on Accessible Web Images for details on how to implement text alternatives in Cascade.
Additional Resources
Example of when an image is considered decorative →
Recap on accessible headings →
Sent to Cascade Users Oct. 20, 2022