Why Alt Text Still Matters for SEO and Accessibility

Alt text has been part of HTML since the <img> tag existed. It’s one of the oldest accessibility features on the web, and it’s still one of the most skipped.

It’s not just a screen reader thing

Alt text is read aloud by screen readers, which makes it essential for blind and low-vision users. But it also does more:

• Image search — Google Images and Bing Images use alt text to understand and rank what a picture shows.
• Broken images — If an image fails to load, the alt text shows in its place.
• Context for crawlers — Search engines can’t “see” an image the way a person can. Alt text is one of the few direct signals they get.

Skip it, and you’re invisible in image search, harder to use for a meaningful group of visitors, and missing a small but real ranking signal on every page with images.

Why teams skip it anyway

Not because they don’t care. Because it doesn’t scale.

Writing one good alt text takes thirty seconds. Writing alt text for a product catalog with 4,000 SKUs takes days, and it’s the first task cut when a launch date gets tight. Most teams end up with a mix: a handful of hand-written descriptions from the early days, and thousands of images with nothing at all.

What good alt text actually looks like

A useful alt text description is specific, not generic:

• Bad: "product photo"
• Better: "Burgundy low-top sneaker with a white sole, floating on a yellow background"

The second version helps a screen reader user understand what they’re looking at, and it gives a search engine something concrete to index.

Making it scale

This is the exact gap AltGen was built for: point it at a folder, a CSV, or a live page, and it writes contextual, per-image alt text across your whole library at once, in whatever language your audience reads in. No more picking between “ship on time” and “ship accessible.”