Journals now require alt text before they publish. Here’s what that means for your press office

A researcher sends your press office a newly accepted paper with six figures attached. A year ago, nobody in that chain would have asked whether the figures had alt text. At AIP Publishing, the answer now decides whether the paper goes out at all: since April 2026, authors have to supply it, and articles can’t proceed to publication until it’s done.

For a communications team, the short version is this: the journal version of each figure will now arrive with an image description written by the people who made it. That’s a useful head start, but it isn’t the description your news story, social post, or department page needs.

What the requirement says, and what it doesn’t

AIP’s announcement covers figures, tables, and multimedia. Accessibility prompts show up at submission, again during revision, and once more before proofs are confirmed, with built-in checks that stop an article from moving forward while alt text is missing. The page cites WCAG 2.1 AA as the standard behind the change.

It is one publisher’s policy. We haven’t verified what other journals require, so check the author guidelines for the ones your researchers publish in. The direction of travel is worth noticing, though: a gate that sits inside the publishing workflow gets done, where a recommendation tends to get skipped.

Why the journal’s alt text won’t cover your post

Alt text depends on what the image is doing where it appears. The W3C’s own tutorial on images frames it that way: the right alternative depends on the purpose of the image. In a journal, a figure supports an argument for specialists who have the full text beside it. In your press release, the same figure may be the whole point, shown to a reader with no paper to consult.

The second one states the finding, which is what a screen reader user would otherwise miss. For more on that approach, see alt text for charts and infographics.

What to change in your workflow this term

First, add one line to your request for research images: “Please send the journal’s alt text with each figure.” It costs a researcher nothing, since it already exists, and it saves you from guessing what a plot’s axes mean. If a figure is purely decorative, the informative versus decorative test tells you when to write nothing.

Second, remember that research doesn’t only travel as web images. Summaries and fact sheets often go out as decks and PDFs, which is where alt text in slides and PDFs gets missed.

Third, the legal backdrop for public universities hasn’t gone away. WCAG success criterion 1.1.1 asks for a text alternative for non-text content at Level A, and the ADA Title II web deadline has been pushed back rather than dropped; what to do with the extra year is worth a read. This isn’t legal advice, and your counsel should interpret what applies to you. If you’re on a campus team, our page for colleges covers how SnipAlt fits.

If you’re still making the case internally for why this matters, why alt text matters is the place to start. And when a figure arrives with no description, snip it with Ctrl+Shift+A (⌘⇧A on a Mac) and edit the draft SnipAlt returns.