ACT Rule 0va7u6
HTML images contain no text
Text baked into a picture cannot be resized, restyled, translated or selected, and it blurs when somebody zooms. This rule checks that images on the page are not carrying text that should have been text.
W3C's implementation table lists no tool or methodology with a consistent implementation of this rule today, which is a statement about what is currently reported rather than about what a machine could do. The rule is approved, which in W3C's process means it was implemented in full by at least one tool or methodology and then signed off by a working group. Approval is a statement about tools, not a statement that this is the settled way to test the criterion.
What passing this rule proves
When this rule fails, 1.4.5 Images of Text is not satisfied, and that half is certain. When it passes, W3C's own outcome mapping says the criterion still needs further testing. So a green result here is evidence that one specific thing is not broken, and it is the answer W3C gives on 59 of its 87 live rules.
So a person does the whole thing, and on a marketing site full of banner graphics that is a good half hour of looking at pictures and asking whether the words in them are really pictures. W3C also lists the stricter 1.4.9 as related rather than tested here, because that criterion drops the exceptions this rule allows.
The criteria this rule is a test for
These are the criteria the rule names as its own conformance requirement. Each one is a far bigger question than this rule asks, and our page for it sets out what the whole criterion covers.
- 1.4.5 Images of Text Level AA
Criteria that are related but not tested here
W3C calls these secondary requirements. The rule correlates with them and was not designed to test them, so each one is either stricter than the rule or can be satisfied in ways the rule never looks at.
- 1.4.9 Images of Text (No Exception) Level AAA
The normative rule text lives at W3C
What the rule applies to, and exactly what it expects, is published by W3C and can change. We link to it rather than restate it, so nothing here can quietly fall out of date against the source. Read rule 0va7u6 at W3C.
Text must not be baked into images
Text inside a picture cannot be resized, restyled, recolored or read by anything that works with text. It blurs when magnified and it ignores every reading preference the user has set.
Real text styled with CSS does everything the image was doing and keeps working when someone changes it.
Headings and pull quotes exported as images to keep a typeface or marketing banners where the offer exists only inside the picture. Users cannot resize or recolor the text.
Fixes that satisfy it
If this rule fails on your site, these are the techniques that put it right.
All 87 ACT rules are grouped by the criteria they test, and 24 of them decide nothing about WCAG on their own. Run a free scan to see which of these your own pages trip.