G95Sufficient technique WCAG 1.1.1 Level A Partly scanner-detectable

Give every graphic a brief text description

Some images cannot be reduced to a sentence, and G95 is the honest minimum for those. A short text alternative that briefly describes the content, with a longer description supplied separately by another technique. W3C counts it as sufficient for the non-text-content rule at Level A, using a more specific technique, which in HTML is the alt attribute. Read the scope carefully, because this one is easy to misuse. G95 is for content whose meaning genuinely will not compress, like a complex chart or a photograph carrying an argument. It is not a licence to write photo on everything and call it finished. Where the meaning does fit in a sentence, the fuller technique applies and the alternative has to carry the whole of it.

How we find it in an audit

Every image gets read for whether its alternative describes the content or the file. Photo, image, banner and chart are the four we find most, and not one of them describes anything. Where an image is genuinely too rich for a sentence, we check a longer description exists somewhere and that the short one points at it. Then a reviewer looks at the image beside its text to settle the only question that matters, which is whether somebody who cannot see it learns what it was doing on the page.

How affected users experience it

Alt text reading image tells a screen-reader user that something is here and nothing whatsoever about what. They cannot tell whether it mattered, so they either skip it and risk losing the point or stop and try to reconstruct it from context. Both cost time, and the second costs confidence as well. A brief description ends the question in six words. Rescue workers carrying sandbags along the flooded high street. Not everything about the photo, and enough to know what it says.

Passes vs. fails

Passes: alt text names the product. Fails: the file name is all there is.

Passes

Alt text reading Rescue workers carrying sandbags along the flooded high street. Brief, and the situation lands.

Fails

A news photo carries alt text reading photo, so the subject, the place and the relevance are all withheld.

How this gets tested

The W3C publishes test rules that define what a checker looks for here.

Element marked as decorative is not exposedA tool can check this
Image accessible name is descriptiveA tool finds candidates, you decide
Image button has non-empty accessible nameA tool can check this
Image has non-empty accessible nameA tool can check this
Link has non-empty accessible nameA tool can check this
Object element rendering non-text content has non-empty accessible nameA tool can check this
SVG element with explicit role has non-empty accessible nameA tool can check this
Image not in the accessibility tree is decorativeA tool can check this

Other ways to satisfy this rule

39 guides on this site are filed under 1.1.1 Non-text Content. W3C lists this one as sufficient for that rule when it is implemented through a more specific technique, so the condition is part of the test rather than a footnote to it.

This guide is our interpretation of W3C technique G95: Providing short text alternatives that provide a brief description of the non-text content. W3C publishes its techniques as guidance rather than as the standard, and says so on every one of them. The success criterion is what conformance is measured against, and a technique is one documented way to meet it.