According to the Web Almanac chapter on accessibility, 69% of images pass basic alt text audits. Contrast this to WebAIM Million report, where 18.5% of all home page images had no alternative text.
I guess that's good news.
Still, I take this with a grain of salt. Because about 8.5% of alt texts are just filenames. Like "image.jpg." And that's useless for screen reader users.
Half of all images have either empty alt text or descriptions under 10 characters. The sweet spot seems to be 20-30 characters. JPG and PNG still dominate, but WEBP and SVG are growing. Even if AI tools are starting to help with image descriptions generation, there's debate about their effectiveness.
The most concerning finding is that 50% of web images still have empty or as-good-as-empty alt text. Decorative images should be marked with an empty alt text, but most images convey actual information and don't fit that criteria.
Honestly?
I expected this. I know the report is from 2025 and alt text isn't rocket science. It's easy to describe what you see. But most don't do it. It's rare I open BlueSky and don't see someone complaining about missing image descriptions. And filenames don't count. I don't need to hear your camera's filing system.
We've had decades to sort this out.
But I think we'll come back next year and say the same thing.
Still, 69% passing is still 69% passing. That's millions of pages where people do care. And those 20-30 character descriptions are becoming more common, which means we're learning.
And I have less discussions about "why do we need it" and more about "how do we add it" and "how do we write good descriptions." That makes me smile.