Notes on alt text & shipping faster.
Short, useful reads on accessibility, social workflows, and building SnipAlt.
Where your snips go, and what we keep
Your snip is sent to a server, described by an AI model, and returned as text. Here's what SnipAlt keeps, what it doesn't, and what to know before you snip.
Read the post →Black Friday alt text before the pile hits
Black Friday images pile up for weeks before the day itself. Here's how to triage, write, and pace your alt text so the deadline doesn't eat it.
Read the post →One in six images still has no alt text
The 2026 WebAIM Million found 16.2% of home page images missing alt text — and a filled field isn't the same as a useful one. What it means for your posts.
Read the post →Alt text as a deliverable: handing it off instead of hoping
Agencies shoot the photos but rarely ship the alt text. Here's how to make image descriptions a named deliverable a client can actually receive and paste in.
Read the post →Describing color and contrast in alt text without over-describing
Color belongs in your alt text when it carries meaning, and nowhere else. Here's how to tell the difference, plus why contrast is a design fix instead.
Read the post →Alt text on Pinterest: what the field does, and what it doesn't
Pinterest gives every Pin a 500-character alt text box hidden under More options. Here's what it does for screen reader users, and what it doesn't do.
Read the post →Alt text for maps, floor plans, and campus diagrams
A map is a complex image — one alt string can't carry it. Here's how to decide what a map, floor plan, or campus diagram needs to say.
Read the post →Alt text in slide decks and PDFs: the files nobody audits
Decks and PDFs on your site follow the same rules as your web pages, and almost nobody checks them. Here's where the alt text field hides in each one.
Read the post →WCAG 3's 2026 draft: what it changes about describing images
The March 2026 WCAG 3 draft splits image alternatives into three separate requirements. Here's what changes for the people writing alt text.
Read the post →Screen readers can describe images with AI now — so why write alt text?
JAWS and NVDA can generate image descriptions on demand. Here's what those descriptions actually say, and why they don't replace the alt text you write.
Read the post →One hotkey, no upload: what writing alt text inside your actual workflow looks like
Most alt text gets skipped not because people can’t write it, but because writing it means leaving the work, uploading the image, and finding your way back.
Read the post →The ADA Title II web deadline moved to 2027 — what to do with the extra year
DOJ pushed the Title II web accessibility deadline to April 2027, and a lawsuit may undo it. What campus and city teams should do with the extra twelve months.
Read the post →One hotkey, no upload: what writing alt text inside your actual workflow looks like
Most alt text gets skipped not because people can’t write it, but because writing it means leaving the work, uploading the image, and finding your way back.
Read the post →The ADA Title II web deadline moved to 2027 — what to do with the extra year
DOJ pushed the Title II web accessibility deadline to April 2027, and a lawsuit may undo it. What campus and city teams should do with the extra twelve months.
Read the post →Putting alt text in your brand style guide (so it survives staff turnover)
The person on your team who cares about alt text will eventually leave. A one-page style guide entry — written as decisions, not principles — is what keeps the field filled after they go.
Read the post →Writing alt text for images you didn’t take or choose
Most alt text is written by someone who wasn’t there. How to describe a client’s photo, a designer’s pick, or a customer repost without guessing your way into an error.
Read the post →Back-to-school accessibility: what campus teams should fix before the semester starts
Mid-August is when campus content volume spikes and accessibility quietly slides. Four things a marketing and communications team can fix in an afternoon, before move-in week buries them.
Read the post →Alt text for logos and brand marks: usually shorter than you think
A linked logo should say where it goes, not what it looks like — and when a logo sits beside its own name in text, the right alt text is nothing at all.
Read the post →Alt text on X: the 1,000-character field almost nobody fills in
X gives you 1,000 characters of image description — more room than Instagram or LinkedIn — behind a button most accounts never press, and there's no way to fix it once the post is live.
Read the post →Alt text for photos of people: names, roles, and when appearance matters
Photos of people are the hardest images to describe well. Here's how to lead with who someone is and what they're doing, and how to decide when appearance belongs in the description at all.
Read the post →Alt text for screenshots: UI, dashboards, and pictures of text
Screenshots are the images most likely to carry real information — and the most likely to go undescribed. How to write alt text for dashboards, UI walkthroughs, and pictures of text.
Read the post →Alt text for Facebook — and why the auto-generated version isn't enough
Facebook writes a description for every image you don't describe yourself — here's where the real field lives on desktop and mobile, and why “May be an image of 3 people” isn't a substitute.
Read the post →Alt text on Bluesky: what to do with a 2,000-character field
Bluesky gives you 2,000 characters of alt text — more room than any other major platform — plus a reminder you can't dismiss and no way to fix a description after you post.
Read the post →The European Accessibility Act turns one: what enforcement actually looked like
A year after the EAA took effect, two French court rulings and a handful of quiet regulators have shown what enforcement really looks like — and where it lands on a marketing team.
Read the post →Meta Business Suite dropped alt text — here's where to add it now
Since April 2026 you can't add alt text through Meta Business Suite at all — here's where the field still lives, which schedulers can still reach it, and how to fix the posts that already went out.
Read the post →What "good" looks like: 10 before-and-after alt text rewrites
Ten weak alt text lines rewritten into strong ones — a quick, copyable model for what good actually looks like across product shots, charts, screenshots, and memes.
Read the post →Alt text for stock photos (without the stock-caption voice)
Stock photos arrive with a caption built to sell them in a catalog; here's how to write alt text that actually describes your image.
Read the post →Building alt text into your content calendar
Alt text fails when it's a last-minute scramble — here's how to fold it into your content calendar so it's written before publish day, not during it.
Read the post →Decorative vs. informative images: when to write nothing
Not every image deserves a description — how to tell decorative from informative, and why an empty alt attribute is a decision, not a skipped field.
Read the post →Alt text for email marketing images
Email is the one channel where images routinely don’t load at all — here’s what to put in the alt field so your message survives.
Read the post →How to Audit a Year of Posts for Missing Alt Text
Instagram and Facebook let you fix old alt text after the fact. X and LinkedIn don't — which means the audit needs a different plan for each.
Read the post →Alt text for GIFs and short video thumbnails
Most platforms don't give GIFs or video posts an alt text field at all — here's where the field actually exists, and what to do everywhere else.
Read the post →The real cost of inaccessible social content
Skipping alt text doesn't just skip a field — it quietly shrinks your reach, erodes trust with the followers you can least afford to lose, and compounds with every post.
Read the post →Emoji in alt text: yes or no?
A screen reader doesn't skip the emoji in your alt text — it reads out every one's technical name, out loud, before it gets to your image.
Read the post →The 125-character rule: where it comes from and when to break it
The 125-character alt text rule isn't quite the truncation myth people think it is — here's where the number actually comes from and when to ignore it.
Read the post →Alt text for carousels: describing a sequence
A carousel isn't ten separate photos to a screen reader — it's one sequence, and each slide's alt text has to work both alone and in order.
Read the post →How screen readers actually announce your images
"Image," "graphic," or a filename read letter by letter — here's exactly what a screen reader says when it hits your photo, with and without alt text.
Read the post →Alt text vs. captions vs. descriptions: what's the difference
Three fields, three jobs — here's how to tell alt text, captions, and image descriptions apart so you stop writing the same sentence three times.
Read the post →Accessibility laws marketers should know: ADA, WCAG, and the EAA in plain English
ADA, WCAG, and the EAA are three different rulebooks that all end up pointing at the same standard — here's what each one actually requires, in plain English.
Read the post →Alt text for product photos that also helps SEO
Google can't see your product photos any better than a screen reader can — here's how to describe them specifically enough to rank, without sliding into keyword stuffing.
Read the post →Alt text for memes and text-heavy graphics
The words baked into a meme or quote graphic are invisible to a screen reader — here's how to write alt text when the text is the whole point.
Read the post →Alt text for charts and infographics
A chart isn't a photo — good alt text for one describes the takeaway, not the furniture. Here's how to write it without drowning in data points.
Read the post →Do hashtags belong in alt text?
A hashtag typed into the alt text field doesn't do what you think it does — here's the short, definitive answer on where hashtags actually belong.
Read the post →Alt text and AI search: how ChatGPT reads your images
Screen readers aren't the only ones reading your alt text now — ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI answers do too. Here's how that works.
Read the post →Alt text for LinkedIn: the B2B angle most marketers miss
LinkedIn feels buttoned-up, but alt text there is opt-in too — and its 120-character limit is tighter than almost anywhere else.
Read the post →Alt text for Instagram: where the field hides and what to write
Instagram buries its alt text field two taps deep in Advanced settings. Here's exactly where to find it — on new posts, carousels, and old ones — and what to type once you do.
Read the post →The most skipped 125 characters in marketing
Alt text is the field everyone means to fill in and almost nobody does. Here's what it actually costs you — in reach, in SEO, and in the audience you're quietly leaving out.
Read the post →Introducing SnipAlt
Why we built a snipping tool that writes alt text — and how the bulk-upload shuffle convinced us the fix had to live on your screen, not in another tab.
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