What to ask your agency about alt text

Every audit we run turns up some version of this. If you are briefing an agency or a freelancer on alt text, these questions are worth asking early.

Accessibility work almost always improves the experience for people who have no impairment at all. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.

Questions worth asking

• Who will actually do this work, and have they done it before?
• How will we know afterwards whether it worked?
• What happens if it needs changing in a year?
• What are you assuming that we have not confirmed?

What a good answer sounds like

Describe the purpose, not the appearance. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

Never start with "image of". There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.

What this looks like day to day

Most of it is correctness rather than charity: use the right element and much of it happens automatically. Three things worth confirming about alt text before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Never start with "image of" — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If any of that sounds like a description of your current setup, it is fixable.