Image Alt Text

A short written description of the image, read aloud to visitors who cannot see it.

Where to find it
Labelled Image Alt Text in the "Selected Component" section of the Modify drawer.
Offered by
The Image component. Other components do not have this setting.
Per device
Yes — you can set one value for every screen, or separate values for phone, tablet, and desktop.

In plain English

Alt text is a sentence describing what the image shows. Most visitors never encounter it, but three groups depend on it: people using a screen reader, who hear it read aloud in place of the picture; anyone whose image failed to load, who sees it as text; and search engines, which have no other way to know what the image is of.

Write it as if you were describing the picture to someone on the phone. "A barista pouring milk into a takeaway cup" tells them something. "image1.jpg" or "photo" tells them nothing.

One important exception: if the image is purely decorative — a background texture, a divider, a flourish that adds nothing to the meaning — the correct alt text is empty. That tells a screen reader to skip it silently rather than announcing something irrelevant.

In most countries this is a legal accessibility requirement rather than a nice-to-have.

When you would use it

  • Every single time you add a meaningful image.
  • Leave it deliberately empty for images that are purely decorative.

How to change it

  1. Click the image component on the canvas.
  2. In the Modify drawer, open "Selected Component", then "Image Alt Text".
  3. Write a short, specific description — usually one sentence is plenty.
One value, or one per device? Every input in this setting sits under a “Same value for all resolutions” checkbox. Leave it checked for a single value everywhere, or uncheck it to give phones, tablets, and desktops their own. How per-device values work.

Watch out for

  • Do not start with "Image of" or "Picture of". A screen reader already announces that it is an image, so you are making the listener sit through it twice.
  • Do not stuff keywords in. Search engines discount it, and it makes the experience worse for the people who actually rely on the text.
  • If the image contains words — a poster, a quote card, a chart label — the alt text must include those words, or that content simply does not exist for some visitors.

Related settings

For developers

The technical reference for what this setting produces: MDN: the alt attribute. You do not need any of it to use the setting — it is there for whoever is building the components or debugging the published page.

Where to go next