Describing your team: alt text for careers, hiring, and workplace photos

Alt text for a careers page or job post should say what the photo shows and why it is there: the work, the setting, and what the people are doing. It should not guess who they are, how they identify, or how they feel. One or two plain sentences give a job seeker using a screen reader the same sense of your workplace that a sighted visitor gets from the picture.

October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month, which the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy leads each year; its 2026 theme is “Celebrating Value and Talent.” A careers page is often where a candidate first meets your employer, so it is a good week to check what your team photos say to someone who cannot see them. (For the bigger picture, start with why alt text matters.)

What should alt text say about a team photo?

Start with the reason the photo is on the page. The W3C notes that whether an image is informative or decorative is the author’s call, based on why it is included, and that the text alternative should convey the meaning, which typically is not a literal description. A photo that shows what a day on your team looks like is carrying meaning, so it needs a description.

The strong version tells a candidate what the job involves. It also stays short; for how long is too long, see the 125-character rule.

What should you leave out?

Leave out guesses. Do not infer disability, age, race, or gender from how someone looks, and skip adjectives that only flatter, like “diverse” or “happy.” Mention a visible detail, such as a wheelchair, a hearing aid, or a sign language interpreter, only when it is part of what the photo is showing, and ask the person how they would like it described. When you know who is pictured, name them and their role; our guide to alt text for photos of people covers when appearance matters.

Stock photos are different. The W3C’s example is a stock photo of a happy family on a company site, where the alt text is simply “We’re family-friendly,” because that “best describes the intended impression,” and the individuals should not be identified. If your “culture” image is stock, write the point it makes for the page, not a catalog of strangers.

When is empty alt text the right answer?

When the photo adds nothing the nearby text does not already say, or is there only for ambiance. The W3C says decorative images should get an empty alt attribute and warns that leaving the attribute out entirely is not an option, since some screen readers then read the file name. Be honest with yourself about which photos are which; our guide to decorative vs. informative images has a quick test. If a recruiting graphic carries a job title or an apply-by date inside the image, put that text in the description too.

Make it a hiring-page habit

Do the whole careers section in one sitting: screenshot each photo, run SnipAlt with Ctrl+Shift+A (⌘⇧A on a Mac), then edit the draft so it names the people and roles you know and drops anything you would not want read aloud. Then paste it into the field. This is general accessibility guidance, not legal advice, but it costs a few minutes and it is the part of your employer brand a candidate on a screen reader can actually hear.