--- title: "What Is Alt Text?" url: https://guavawebcompliance.com/articles/what-is-alt-text description: "Alt text is the description a screen reader reads instead of an image. What it is, why missing it breaks a purchase, and how to fix it, with a real case and our own scan findings." published: 2026-07-22 updated: 2026-07-22 --- A screen reader hits a picture and has two options: read a sentence describing what's in it, or read the file name instead — "image, IMG, 4471, JPEG" — and move on. Alt text is that sentence: a short, written description of what an image shows, spoken aloud so someone who can't see the picture still knows what's there. ## Why it matters Look at a product photo and you know what you're about to buy. Take the picture away and leave only a file name, and you know nothing — not the color, not the shape, not whether it's even the right product. That's the whole transaction a screen reader user gets when alt text is missing. The same blank hits a seasonal sale banner, a chart of pricing tiers, a photo of a floor plan: real information a sighted visitor gets for free, and a screen reader user doesn't get at all. ## What it looks like That's not hypothetical. A 2023 lawsuit against Hasbro's toy site, Hasbropulse.com, put it in the plaintiff's own words: "There are many important pictures on Hasbropulse.com that lack a text equivalent... Plaintiff and blind Hasbropulse.com customers are unable to determine what is on the website, browse the website or investigate and/or make purchases." Luis Toro, the plaintiff, is legally blind and reads by screen reader. He alleged the same site trapped keyboard users too — buttons a mouse could click but a keyboard couldn't reach. We've found the same gap ourselves, on a different kind of site entirely. Scanning 12 real-estate brokerage sites for a separate project, our tool flagged missing alt text on IDX/MLS logo images and tracking pixels on 4 of the 12 — 11 pages in total. None of those images had any alt attribute at all, meaningful or empty. ## How it's fixed Give every meaningful image a short, specific description of what it actually shows: "Gold wire-frame sunglasses, front view," never "image1.jpg," never the file name at all. Give a purely decorative image — a background texture, a spacer — an empty alt attribute (`alt=""`) instead, so a screen reader skips it on purpose rather than reading out clutter. The rule of thumb: if the image carries information, describe it; if it doesn't, mark it silent. Either way, a person has to look at the page and decide — a script can't do that at scale, which is why automated overlays can't fix it either. Want to know if your own site has this gap? [Run it through our free report](https://guavawebcompliance.com/free-scan) — no login, no credit card, no sales call. --- ## The fine print - **The Hasbro case was never decided on the merits.** *Toro v. Hasbro, Inc.* settled two months after filing, with no ruling on whether the alt-text allegation — or any other — was true. A settlement resolves a claim; it doesn't adjudicate one, [as we've written elsewhere](https://guavawebcompliance.com/articles/settling-ada-website-lawsuit). What's cited here is the complaint's language, not a court finding. - **Our brokerage figure is a floor, from a small, purposive sample.** 12 sites, chosen because a template vendor features them in its own showcase — not a random sample of real estate sites generally, and not a claim about how common this is industry-wide. Automated scanning also can't judge whether alt text that exists is actually accurate; it only catches images missing it outright. - **WCAG 2.1** covers this under [Success Criterion 1.1.1, Non-Text Content](https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/#non-text-content) — the standard courts reference in ADA website cases, not one any court has adopted as binding law. - **We're not lawyers, and this isn't legal advice.** ### Sources - **U.S. District Court, S.D.N.Y.**, Class Action Complaint, *Toro v. Hasbro, Inc.*, No. 1:23-cv-02800 (Abrams, J.), ECF No. 1, filed Apr. 4, 2023 — https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.596666/gov.uscourts.nysd.596666.1.0.pdf - **W3C**, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, Success Criterion 1.1.1 — https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/#non-text-content - Guava's own brokerage-template scan, 2026-07-20 (internal findings, methodology on request)