Why alt text matters more than it looks

The advice here is unglamorous, which is probably why it gets skipped. Alt text is easy to treat as a detail, and that is exactly why it is worth a few minutes of attention.

Most of it is correctness rather than charity: use the right element and much of it happens automatically. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.

What it costs to ignore

Describe the purpose, not the appearance. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.

Decorative images should have empty alt attributes. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.

Common failure modes

Never start with "image of". None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

The short version

The cost of retrofitting accessibility is several times the cost of building it in. Three things worth confirming about alt text before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Describe the purpose, not the appearance — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

None of this needs a rewrite. Most of it is a morning's work once someone decides to do it.