Image has no accessible name Accessibility Checkpoint

Description

img elements must have an accessible name.

Help

Add an alt attribute describing the image, which screen readers voice instead of the image. Spacer images and purely decorative images should use alt="" without any global ARIA attributes. Do not use alt text containing only spaces since that’s voiced as an unlabeled image.

Applicable standards

• ACT Rules 23a2a8
• WCAG 2.0 F65 (Success Criteria: 1.1.1 level A)
• WCAG 2.1 F65 (Success Criteria: 1.1.1 level A)
• WCAG 2.2 F65 (Success Criteria: 1.1.1 level A)
• Section 508 (2017) F65 (Success Criteria: 1.1.1 level A)

Note: Section 508 Refresh (2017) checkpoints are equivalent to WCAG 2.0 level A and level AA checkpoints.

Impact on users

• NVDA 2024.4 / Edge 131 Image ignored.
• JAWS 2024.2409.2 / Edge 131 Image ignored.
• VoiceOver macOS 14.6 / Safari 17.6 Image filename read out.
• VoiceOver iOS 17.7 / Safari iOS 17.7 Image filename read out, along with OCR text from image.

Change history

• 5.36 Jan 2020 Improved detection. Changed rule ID from AccWcag1-1.1.8 to AccHtmlImgNoAlt.
• 5.35 Oct 2019 Fixed false positive.
• 5.32 Feb 2019 Fixed false positive in SVG fallbacks.
• 5.9 Jun 2015 Detect non-standard image tags.
• 5.5 May 2014 Updated to April 2014 version of Techniques for WCAG 2.0.
• 5.0 Oct 2012 Don’t fire on IMG elements with no SRC attribute.
• 4.4 Aug 2011 Failed to detect missing ALT when badly formed IMG tag used in XHTML documents (HTML documents worked as expected).
• 3.5 Dec 2009 Don’t fire if start tag contains unclosed attributes: <IMG SRC=‘file.png ALT=‘Sunset’ >
• 3.0 Dec 2008 Now triggers WCAG2 issue.
• 2.0 Dec 2007 Now triggers Section 508 issue.
• 1.0 Feb 2007 Added.

This page describes a web site issue detected in HTML documents by SortSite Desktop and OnDemand Suite.

Rule ID: AccHtmlImgNoAlt