Alt text describes an image for anyone who can't see it — screen reader users, and search engine crawlers that can't visually interpret images at all — meaning a missing alt attribute both excludes real users and gives Google zero information about what that image actually shows.
Alt text describes images to screen readers and to Google Images, which is a real source of traffic. Missing alt text forfeits image search visibility and hurts accessibility.
Descriptive alt text serves multiple genuine, distinct functions simultaneously — providing essential accessibility information for visitors using screen readers who cannot see the image directly, giving search engines textual context for understanding image content they cannot directly interpret visually, and providing fallback text when an image fails to load for any reason.
The accessibility function deserves genuine, primary emphasis — alt text is often the only way a visitor using a screen reader can understand what an image actually depicts and why it's relevant to the surrounding content, making this a genuine accessibility requirement rather than purely an SEO optimization technique, even though it happens to serve both purposes simultaneously.
The SEO function operates through image search specifically, along with providing search engines general content-understanding signal — since search engines cannot directly interpret image content the way they process text, accurate, descriptive alt text provides essential context that can influence both image search visibility and the search engine's overall understanding of the page's complete content and relevance.
Genuine descriptiveness, rather than generic or keyword-stuffed alt text, matters for both functions this element serves — alt text should accurately describe what the image actually depicts in a way genuinely useful to someone who cannot see it, avoiding both empty, unhelpful descriptions and artificially keyword-stuffed text that serves neither the accessibility nor the genuine SEO purpose this element is meant to fulfill.
Every meaningful image has specific, descriptive alt text; purely decorative images use an empty alt attribute.
Fix it, then re-scan — the check confirms itself. No manual checkbox, the scan is the truth.
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