Alt text generator

What alt text is for

Alt text is the short description in an image's alt attribute: <img src="..." alt="A golden retriever catching a frisbee on a beach">. Screen readers read it aloud to people who can't see the image. Browsers show it when the image fails to load. And search engines use it, together with the text around the image, to understand what the image shows, which is how images end up in image search.

So the job of alt text is simple: say what someone would miss if they couldn't see the image. Not what you'd like to rank for, and not what the file is called.

How to write good alt text

• Describe what matters on this page. A photo of a person on a team page needs their name and role; the same photo in a blog post about remote work might need what they're doing.
• Include any words in the image. If a banner says "50% off this week", the alt text should say it too, or screen reader users never hear the offer.
• Keep it short. Around 125 characters is common guidance, not a hard limit. A sentence is usually enough; for a chart, give the takeaway in the alt and the details in the page text.
• Skip "image of" and "picture of". Screen readers already announce that it's an image.
• For an image that's a link or a button, describe where it goes or what it does: "Download the price list", not "Arrow icon".
• Use your keyword only when it honestly describes the image. A list of keywords in alt text is spam, and it's miserable to listen to.

This alt text generator follows those rules: three alternatives, from short and plain to more detailed, each with a character count, and a third one fitted to your page when you describe it.

When an empty alt="" is the right answer

Not every image needs a description. Decorative images (a background texture, a divider, a flourish) and icons next to text that already says the same thing add nothing for someone who can't see them. For those, write alt="", an alt attribute with nothing in it. Screen readers then skip the image entirely, which is what you want.

That's different from leaving the alt attribute out. With no alt at all, many screen readers read the file name instead, so a listener hears "IMG underscore 4471 dot jpeg". Every image should have an alt attribute; only decorative ones should have an empty one. The generator tells you when it thinks an image is decorative and why, but you know your page better: if the image carries meaning there, use a description.

What the generator can't know

It sees the image and the sentence you give it, nothing else. It won't know that the person in the photo is your head of support, which model of shoe that is, or why the picture is on the page, unless you say so in the page description. It won't name people it can't identify from the image. Check product names and any text it reads from the image before you publish.

It reads JPG, PNG, WebP and GIF files up to 5 MB, one at a time. It doesn't read SVGs, because they're drawings made of code; a logo's alt text is usually just the company name. To find every image on a page that's missing alt text, use the image SEO checker first, then bring the ones that need words here.