Alt text for stock photos (without the stock-caption voice)

You need an image for a post about remote work, so you grab one from your stock library: four people around a laptop, everyone mid-laugh, a suspiciously tidy desk. It does the job on the page. Then you reach the alt text field and paste whatever the stock site called it — "Group of diverse business professionals collaborating in modern office, teamwork concept, copy space."

That sentence was written for a search box on a marketplace of millions, not for a person listening to your post. Stock photos arrive with a voice already attached, and it's the wrong one.

Describe the photo, not the listing

Stock captions are tuned to be found in a giant catalog, so they pile on interchangeable nouns: "concept," "lifestyle," "background," "copy space." A screen reader user needs none of that. They need to know what's actually in the frame. Strip the marketplace keywords and describe the specific image in front of you.

Say what the image is doing in your post

Good alt text answers a question the stock caption never asks: what is this picture doing here? A photo chosen to illustrate "distributed teams" should lean on that meaning, not on the plant in the corner. Lead with the subject, keep the one detail that carries your point, and let the rest go. Aim for roughly 125 characters — specific enough to be useful, short enough that screen readers won't cut it off.

Watch the people, not just the props

Stock photos are full of people, and describing them takes a little care. Unless someone is a recognizable public figure, don't guess at identity — describe what's relevant to your point, like activity, setting, or body language, rather than assigning labels the image can't actually confirm. "A person presenting to colleagues" usually serves your post better than a string of assumed demographics.

When a stock photo needs no alt text at all

Sometimes the image is pure decoration — an abstract gradient behind a headline, a texture, a mood-setting banner that carries no information a reader would miss. In those cases the accessible choice is an empty alt attribute (alt="") so screen readers skip it cleanly, instead of a dutiful description of scenery nobody needs. Describe the stock photos that inform; silence the ones that only decorate.

The through-line is simple: a stock photo comes with someone else's words, and those words were built to close a sale in a catalog, not to describe your post to a listener. Read the image fresh, say what it shows and why it's there, and drop the "concept."