ADA Alt Text Requirements: The #1 Violation That Gets Sites Sued

What Is Alt Text (and Why It's the #1 Cited Violation)

Alt text — short for "alternative text" — is a written description attached to an image in the HTMLaltattribute. Sighted visitors never see it, but people who are blind or have low vision rely on it completely. Their screen reader reads the alt text aloud so they know what the image shows or does. Alt text also appears when an image fails to load, and search engines use it to understand pictures.

Here is the problem that turns it into a lawsuit magnet: when an image has no alt attribute, most screen readers do not stay silent — they announce the file name instead. A blind shopper hears "I-M-G underscore 4-8-2-1 dot j-p-g" where a product description should be. On an image that is actually a link or button, they may hear nothing usable at all, leaving them unable to navigate or buy.

Under the ADA, U.S. courts and the Department of Justice reference the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) as the compliance standard. Alt text is governed by the very first success criterion, 1.1.1 Non-text Content (Level A) — the most basic tier. You literally cannot claim any level of WCAG conformance if meaningful images lack text alternatives. It is the floor, not the ceiling.

Why is it cited more than any other issue? Two reasons. It is everywhere — nearly every website has images, and a large share have at least some missing descriptions. And it is trivially easy to prove: an automated scanner just checks whether the altattribute exists. That combination — extremely common and machine-verifiable — is why missing alt text tops both accessibility audits and the demand letters that follow. It sits right alongside low color contrast as one of the two most-litigated violations on the web. For the wider list, see our guide to fixing common WCAG violations.

What WCAG Requires — By Image Type

The rule sounds simple — "give every image a text alternative" — but the right alt text depends on what the image is doing on the page. Here is the decision table. Every row maps to WCAG 1.1.1.

How to Write Alt Text That Passes — 6 Rules with Examples

These six patterns cover the vast majority of real-world alt-text mistakes. Each has a failing-vs-passing example so you can see the fix in practice.

Real ADA Lawsuits Involving Missing Alt Text

Missing alt text is rarely the only claim in a website accessibility suit — but because it is the most common and easiest to prove, it appears in the majority of them. Here is the legal context that made image accessibility enforceable in the United States.

Over 3,000 website accessibility lawsuits were filed under ADA Title III in 2025 alone, and the plaintiff's first step is almost always an automated scan — which surfaces missing alt text instantly. That makes it a frequent opening line in demand letters. For the full picture on who gets targeted and for how much, see our ADA lawsuit statistics, and if a letter has already arrived, read what to do when you receive an ADA demand letter.

Who's Most at Risk

Every image-heavy website is exposed, but a few sectors combine high lawsuit volume with the kind of content — large product catalogs, image menus, listing galleries — that makes missing alt text especially likely and especially damaging.

Hotels, gyms, dental offices, nonprofits, and financial services face the same exposure. We publish industry-specific ADA compliance guides that break down the common violations for each sector.

How to Check Your Website for Missing Alt Text

There are three levels of checking, from a quick manual pass to a full automated crawl.

1. 1

   Listen with a screen reader

   Turn on NVDA (free, Windows) or VoiceOver (built into Mac and iPhone) and navigate your page image by image. You will hear immediately which images announce a file name, say nothing useful, or read correctly. This is the ground truth — exactly what a blind visitor experiences.

2. 2

   Inspect elements or run Lighthouse

   Right-click an image and choose "Inspect" to see whether it has an alt attribute and what it says. Or run the free Lighthouse accessibility audit in Chrome DevTools, which flags images with no alt on the current page. Fast for one page, tedious across a whole site.

3. 3

   Scan your entire site automatically

   A real website has dozens of pages and potentially thousands of images — far too many to check by hand, and new images get uploaded constantly. An automated scanner crawls every page, flags every image missing alt text at once, and can re-scan on a schedule so regressions are caught before a plaintiff finds them.

Alt Text Checking Tools Compared

Different tools solve different problems. A screen reader tells you the truth for one page; an automated crawler is the only practical way to audit an entire site. Here is how the main options compare.

The honest summary: use a screen reader to learn what good alt text feels like, then use an automated site scan to make sure nothing is missing across every page — and keep scanning, because every new image upload is a chance to reintroduce the problem.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Bottom Line

Missing alt text is the most common — and most easily proven — accessibility violation on the web, which is why it heads so many demand letters. It is also one of the cheapest to fix: a content edit in your CMS, no developer required for most images. Remember the core rule — describe the purpose, not the pixels; empty alt="" for decoration; never leave the attribute off — and you eliminate the single biggest source of ADA website complaints.

Start by finding out where you stand. Scan your site, fix the descriptions in your CMS, and set up monitoring so new uploads do not quietly reintroduce the gap. For the other top violation, read our ADA color contrast requirements guide, and for the full standard in plain English, see the ADA compliance checklist for small businesses.