Alt text is the shortest writing task on a website and the one most consistently done badly — either skipped entirely or stuffed with keywords for a search engine that stopped rewarding it years ago.
Alt text is the written description attached to an image, read aloud by a screen reader and shown when the image fails to load. It exists so that someone who cannot see the picture gets what the picture was there to convey. That framing answers most questions about how to write it, including the one people ask first — how long should it be — because the answer is: long enough to carry the same meaning, and not a word more.
Two failure modes dominate. The first is the empty field, which turns an image into nothing for anyone using a screen reader. The second is keyword stuffing left over from an era when it worked — descriptions written for a search engine rather than a person, which are useless as descriptions and no longer help ranking either.
Decorative images should have an empty alt attribute — written as alt="" rather than omitted. That is the instruction to skip it, and it is a genuine improvement: a screen reader announcing seven decorative dividers is worse than silence. Leaving the attribute off entirely is different and makes some readers announce the filename, which is how people end up hearing IMG_20240714 read out letter by letter.
It does help image search, and it helps modestly with page context, which is why the keyword-stuffing habit persists. Both benefits arrive from describing the image accurately — the same text that serves a person. Writing for the search engine and writing for the reader converged some years ago; anyone still selling you the distinction is selling an old technique. The wider search picture is in seo checklist.
Ettex Sites prompts for alt text where images are added, and the accessibility question this sits inside is covered in wcag. The one practical rule for an existing site is to fix the images that carry meaning first — product photographs, charts, anything that is also a link — and leave decorative ones marked as decorative rather than working alphabetically through a list.
What we do not do: there is no automatic image description, no bulk generation, and no accessibility scanner. Alt text is written by whoever knows why the image is there, which is a person; software that guesses produces plausible descriptions of the wrong thing, and a confident wrong description is worse than a missing one.
About a sentence. Long enough to carry what the image conveys, short enough to hear read aloud without losing the thread.
They need an empty alt attribute, which tells a screen reader to skip them. Omitting the attribute entirely is different and can cause the filename to be read out.
It helps image search and gives modest page context — by describing the image accurately, which is the same thing that serves a reader. Keyword stuffing has not worked for years.
The finding it shows, not its shape. Revenue fell in Q3 then recovered tells a listener something; bar chart of quarterly revenue tells them nothing they can use.
WCAG is long, and most of it does not apply to a small business site. A short list of failures accounts for the overwhelming majority of real problems — and all of them are fixable without a specialist.
An accessibility statement is not a compliance badge. It says what your site does, what it does not do yet, and how someone shut out by it can reach a human — and the second part is the one that matters.
Local SEO is unusually tractable. Three things carry most of the result — a complete business listing, consistent details everywhere, and reviews — and none of them require a specialist.