AI-generated alt text: is it good enough? A 5-minute review checklist

AI tools can now write alt text for hundreds of product and gallery photos in a few minutes. That's a real time-saver, and it's much better than leaving images blank. But an AI only sees the picture. It doesn't know why the image is on your page, so its first draft often needs a quick human edit before it helps a visitor using a screen reader.

What AI alt text usually gets right

• Describing what is visibly in a photo: objects, colours, setting.
• Covering a large library fast, so no image is left with an empty or missing description.
• Giving you a draft to edit instead of a blank box.

Where it often goes wrong

• Missing the purpose. "A woman smiling at a desk" doesn't tell a visitor that this is your receptionist, or that the photo links to your booking page. Alt text for a link or button should say where it goes or what it does.
• Missing product details. Shoppers need the name, colour, material and view: "Black leather tote, front view", not "a bag on a white background".
• Describing decorative images. Background textures and divider graphics should have empty alt text (alt="") so screen readers skip them. AI tools tend to describe everything.
• Text inside images. Flyers, coupons and menu photos need the actual words. AI may summarise them ("a restaurant menu") instead of including the content, and long text belongs on the page itself.
• Filler and guesses. Phrases like "image of" or "picture of" add nothing, and AI can guess wrong about who someone is or what something is.

A 5-minute review checklist

1. Start with the images that matter most: your logo, hero image, top 10 products or services, and anything that is a link.
2. For each one, ask: if I couldn't see this, what would I need to know here? Edit the draft to say that.
3. Set decorative images to empty alt text instead of keeping the AI description.
4. For images with words in them, make sure the words are on the page as real text.
5. Remove "image of", file names and anything you can't confirm is true.
6. Spot-check the result with our free alt text checker, which lists missing and suspicious alt text on a page.

The W3C's alt text decision tree is a good reference for the decorative-or-informative question. For worked examples, see 20 alt text examples for small-business sites.

Where to edit alt text on each platform

Step-by-step instructions: Shopify, WordPress, Wix, Squarespace.

How Altwise uses AI, honestly

Our Fix-Pack fixes are also written by our AI agent and checked against axe-core and WCAG. Automated checks can tell that alt text is missing or looks like a file name, but they can't judge whether a description is useful for your page. That's why our reports list the images with missing alt text, show an example fix and where to add it on your platform, and leave the final wording, which depends on your page, to you. Alt text is one part of accessibility; contrast, labels and keyboard access matter too.

Want the fixes written for you?

Start with a free homepage snapshot. The $149 Fix-Pack scans up to 10 pages and gives copy-paste fixes for your platform within 48 hours, with a 14-day refund promise. See a sample report first.

This is general technical guidance, not legal advice, and it does not certify compliance with the ADA or any law.

Related guides

• Hotel, inn, bed and breakfast and vacation rental website accessibility
• Online store accessibility: product pages, cart and checkout (keyboard and screen reader checklist)
• Cookie banners, pop-ups and chat widgets: an accessibility checklist for small business websites
• Video captions and transcripts for small-business websites

All guides

This guide is general technical information, not legal advice. Following it does not certify ADA or any legal compliance. Automated checks find only part of accessibility barriers.