Review AI-generated alternative text
Generated alternative text describes what is visible. Good alternative text conveys what the image is for. Those are different, and the difference is the review.
The rule that decides everything
Alt text should convey the image's purpose in its context, not catalogue its contents.
A photograph of a person at a laptop is:
- on a careers page: Software developer working at our Bilbao office
- as a decorative header: empty alt text — it carries no information
- beside a testimonial: Marta Ruiz, operations manager at Aceros del Norte
- illustrating a tutorial step: The settings screen with the Caching option enabled
Same image, four different correct answers. The tool sees the image but not the page, so it cannot choose between them.
Decorative images take empty alt text
If an image adds no information — a background texture, a divider, an icon beside a label that already says the same thing — its alt text should be empty, so screen readers skip it.
Generated alt text is never empty. It will describe the texture. Clearing those values is the single highest-value correction in a review pass, because a screen-reader user hearing "abstract blue gradient background" gains nothing and loses time.
What to correct
Redundancy with nearby text. If the caption or the adjacent paragraph already says it, the alt text should not repeat it.
Prefixes. "Image of", "photo of", "picture showing". Screen readers already announce that it is an image.
Length. Aim for one sentence. A description running to several lines is being read aloud in full, before the reader reaches the content.
Missing names. Generated text says "a woman"; if she is a named team member or a customer giving a testimonial, name her. Get consent before naming people.
Wrong specifics. Product names, model numbers, colours and materials are frequently wrong. On a product image these are the whole point.
Text inside the image. If an image contains words — a sign, a screenshot, a diagram label — those words belong in the alt text.
Images the tool cannot do
Charts and graphs. What matters is the finding, not the appearance. Sales grew 40% between 2023 and 2025, with the fastest growth in Q3 is useful; a description of coloured bars is not. Write these by hand and consider putting the data in a table nearby.
Diagrams and flowcharts. The relationships are the content. Describe them in the surrounding text and keep the alt text short.
Screenshots in instructions. Describe what the reader should notice, not the whole interface.
Images carrying essential information. If the information exists only in the image, it needs a text equivalent in the page, not just alt text.
Title and caption are different fields
The metadata tool writes all three, and they have different jobs:
| Field | Purpose | Visible to |
|---|---|---|
| Alternative text | The text equivalent when the image is not seen | Screen readers, and when the image fails to load |
| Caption | Editorial text displayed beside the image | Everyone |
| Title | An administrative label in the media library | Editors |
Do not paste the same string into all three. A caption that repeats the alt text means screen-reader users hear the same sentence twice.
Reviewing a batch efficiently
The metadata tool processes up to 48 images at a time and lists every result in its summary. Review from that summary:
- Identify the decorative images and empty their alt text.
- Fix wrong product names, numbers and colours.
- Remove "image of" style prefixes.
- Shorten anything over about one sentence.
- Rewrite anything whose context makes the description wrong.
- Check the caption is not a duplicate of the alt text.
Testing it
- Turn images off in the browser and read the page. Does it still make sense?
- Use a screen reader on your two or three most important pages.
- Check that decorative images are silent.
Automated accessibility checkers report missing alt text. They cannot report wrong alt text, and after running this tool nothing will be missing. The checker will pass a page that is still failing its readers — which is precisely why this review exists.
A reasonable standard
Generated alt text is much better than nothing and not as good as considered alt text. Use the tool to eliminate empty fields across the library, then review by hand on the pages that matter, starting with the ones people actually visit.