Non-text Content
Every image, icon, or non-text element that conveys information has a text alternative that serves the same purpose — and every purely decorative image is hidden from assistive technology.
Why it matters
A screen reader user hears whatever the alt text says instead of seeing the image. A missing alt attribute gets read as the filename; a decorative image without hidden markup adds noise to every single page.
Automatically detected
axe-core reliably flags missing alt attributes. Whether the text present is actually meaningful — 'photo1.jpg' vs. a real description — needs the judgement pass, not just presence-checking.
Related axe-core rules: image-alt, input-image-alt, area-alt
Fails
<img src="/team/jane-doe.jpg">
<img src="/icons/decorative-swoosh.svg">The first image has no alt attribute at all — a screen reader announces the filename. The second is purely decorative but still gets announced as an unlabelled image.
Passes
<img src="/team/jane-doe.jpg" alt="Jane Doe, Head of Product">
<img src="/icons/decorative-swoosh.svg" alt="">The photo has a description that conveys who it is, not what the file is called. The decorative image has an empty alt attribute, which tells assistive technology to skip it entirely.
Openwell finds violations like this one across your whole site, clusters them by the component that caused them, and generates a fix that's re-validated before you see it.
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