Image accessible name uses placeholder Accessibility Checkpoint

Description

alt text should not contain placeholders like ‘picture’ or ‘spacer’.

Help

For purely decorative images and spacers use alt='', for images of text use the text, and for other images use a description of the image.

Applicable standards

• WCAG 2.0 F30 (Success Criteria: 1.1.1 level A, 1.2.1 level A)
• WCAG 2.1 F30 (Success Criteria: 1.1.1 level A, 1.2.1 level A)
• Section 508 (2017) F30 (Success Criteria: 1.1.1 level A, 1.2.1 level A)

Note: Section 508 Refresh (2017) checkpoints are equivalent to WCAG 2.0 level A and level AA checkpoints.

Impact on users

• JAWS Reads out placeholder text, instead of a useful image description.
• NVDA Reads out placeholder text, instead of a useful image description.
• VoiceOver Reads out placeholder text, instead of a useful image description.

Change history

• 6.48 Mar 2023 Fixed false positive.
• 5.36 Jan 2020 Fixed false positive.
• 5.27 Oct 2017 Improved placeholder detection. Changed rule ID from AccWcag1-1.1.15 to AccHtmlImgAltPlaceholder.
• 5.9 Jun 2015 Detect non-standard image tag.
• 3.0 Dec 2008 Now triggers WCAG2 issue.
• 2.0 Dec 2007 Now triggers Section 508 issue.
• 1.0 Feb 2007 Added.

This page describes a web site issue detected in HTML documents by SortSite Desktop and OnDemand Suite.

Rule ID: AccHtmlImgAltPlaceholder