[FAQ]

I’m making a concerted effort to improve the accessibility of our email campaigns. I know that adding alt text (alternative text) to all our images is an important part of this, but I’m not entirely sure how to write it effectively.

What are the current best practices for writing descriptive and genuinely helpful alt text for images in an email in 2025? I’m wondering about things like how descriptive I need to be, how long it should be, and what I should do for images that are purely decorative, like a background pattern.

[Jeff Bullas]

Writing effective alt text is a fundamental aspect of creating accessible and user-friendly emails. Its primary purpose is to convey the meaning and function of an image to someone who cannot see it, which includes people using screen readers due to a visual impairment, as well as users who have images blocked by default in their email client.

There are several key best practices to follow. First, you need to be specific and descriptive. Your alt text should concisely describe the important content of the image. For example, instead of a generic alt text like “Person with laptop,” a more effective version would be, “A person smiling while typing on a laptop in a brightly lit cafe.”

Second, you should keep it concise. While the text needs to be descriptive, it is important to be direct and to the point. A good guideline is to try to keep it under about 125 characters. Screen readers will read the entire text aloud, so overly long descriptions can become tedious.

Third, it is crucial to convey the function of the image, not just its appearance. This is especially important for images that are also links. If you have an image of a red button with the words “Read More,” the alt text should be “Read More,” not “Red button.” The alt text should describe the destination or action of the link.

Fourth, you should avoid starting with phrases like “Image of…” or “Picture of…”. This is redundant information, as a screen reader will already announce that the element is an image before reading the alt text. You can just begin with the description itself.

And fifth, you need to handle purely decorative images correctly. If an image provides no useful information and is only there for aesthetic purposes, such as a background pattern or a simple divider line, it should have empty alt text. This is written in the HTML as alt=””. This signals to screen readers that the image is decorative and can be safely ignored, which provides a much better user experience than having it read out a confusing file name.

The context of the email is key. Before writing your alt text, ask yourself, “If I could not see this image, what is the most critical information I would need to understand its purpose in this email?”. By focusing on providing a concise and accurate description of the image’s content and function, you make your emails more accessible and effective for your entire audience.

Cheers,

Jeff

[Author]

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