What "good" looks like: 10 before-and-after alt text rewrites

Most advice about alt text is a list of rules: lead with the subject, skip "image of," keep it tight. The rules are right, but they're abstract. It's easier to copy a good line than to remember a principle at 4:58 on a Friday.

So here are ten. Each pair is a real kind of image a marketing team posts, a weak description of it, and the rewrite. Read them as a model, not a template — the point is the move each one makes.

Lead with the subject, not "image of"

The screen reader already says "image." Your first words should be the thing itself, described the way you'd point it out to someone over your shoulder.

Say the takeaway, not the furniture

For charts and infographics, nobody needs "a bar chart with four bars." They need the point the chart is making. Describe the conclusion, then the shape only if it matters.

Cut the vibe words

Lifestyle and stock images tempt you into mood: "cozy," "enjoying," "vibrant." A screen reader can't use a mood. Name what's actually in the frame and let the reader feel it themselves.

When there's text in the image, the text is the point

Screenshots, quote cards, and memes carry words a sighted reader gets for free. If you don't transcribe them, that content simply doesn't exist for everyone else.

One more, and it's the quiet one: sometimes "good" is nothing at all. A decorative divider or a background texture that carries no information should get an empty alt attribute (alt=""), so the screen reader skips it instead of announcing clutter. Writing a description for that swirl isn't thorough — it's noise.

Notice the shared move across all ten: the strong version is specific, front-loads the subject, and stops. None of them reach for a hard character count, but they all land near the same place — roughly one clear sentence, around 125 characters, because that's what "specific and done" tends to weigh. If yours is running long, you're usually describing the vibe, not the thing.