Images are an important aspect of your website. They provide visual interest and help users engage with your content.
However, not all users of your website can see your images. This is why you should include appropriate alternative text descriptions and avoid sharing text that is meant to be read in an image. Alternative text descriptions help users who read web content with a screen reader better understand the purpose and function of the image on a page.
Images serve several purposes on your site from decorative and informative to functional or complex. The purpose of the image is really what determines the alternative text you should include.
To ensure all images on your site are accessible, we challenge you to the following tasks:
- March: Review your decorative images
- April: Review your images for text
- May: Create a department plan for maintaining image accessibility
Challenge Details for Image Accessibility
Watch Decorative Images
Decorative Images Video Transcript
During our first web accessibility challenge, we are focusing on decorative images. According to WebAIM, decorative images “do not present important content, are used for layout or non-informative purposes, do not appear within a link” and are marked with an empty null alt attribute. (alt=””)
Acquia Optimize marks all images with an empty alt attribute with the review item “Should image be marked as decorative?” Reviewing your decorative images is a great way to perform a quality assurance review on your web content. As you review your decorative images, you have an opportunity to decide if they really are decorative or require an alternative text description, a caption, or need a revision. If they really are decorative, you can mark them as “approved” in Monsido.
Your challenge for this month is to review the decorative images on your site and either revise or approve them. Here’s how to get started
Step 1: Determine how many decorative images you have on your site
Access your Acquia Optimize account. Select Accessibility, Issues, then Should image be marked as decorative? Write down the total number of images currently flagged as decorative.
Step 2: Set your daily or weekly goal for the month
Based on how many decorative images you have in your Acquia Optimize issues list, determine how many images you need to review each day or week to resolve them all this month. If you have a large number of decorative images, you may need to dedicate more time each week than if you only have a handful.
Step 3: Block out time on your calendar
Determine when each day or week you can devote to reviewing images and block this time on your calendar. This can be as little as fifteen minutes once a day, or an hour once a week.
Step 4: Begin reviewing decorative images
As you review images, use the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative alt text decision tree to help determine if your decorative images, are in fact decorative images. If you find an image that should have an alternative text or caption description, login to your webpage and add the alternative text or appropriate caption.
If you find images that contain a lot of text, consider revising them to be more accessible. This may mean adding content directly to your webpage or replacing the image altogether. If an image is truly decorative, then tell Acquia Optimize that you approve the image for that page by selecting the decision option approve.
If you have any questions as you are reviewing images, please get in touch with the OIT Web Accessibility Team at OITAccessibility@boisestate.edu.
