Missing Image Alt Text

## Why missing alt text breaks indexing

Missing alt attributes fail two audiences at once: screen readers and Google. WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion 1.1.1 requires text alternatives for all meaningful images, making this a real accessibility violation. On the SEO side, the image loses its shot at Google Images rankings and the page loses a context signal for its surrounding text. This isn't cosmetic. It's a direct hit to both crawlability and user access.

## How Googlebot and screen readers respond

Without an alt attribute, a screen reader has no instruction and falls back to the raw filename: "product dash 47 dash jpg" instead of "Widget Pro industrial timer, aluminium body". This differs sharply from alt="" (an intentional empty alt), which explicitly tells the screen reader to skip the image. Google's crawler also has nothing to work with: no context to associate the image with the page's topic, making the image harder to index and the surrounding content slightly harder to interpret at scale.

## Alt text alone won't fix thin content

Alt text is a minor ranking signal. Don't chase it if your bigger problem is weak body copy. A page with perfect alt on every image but 200 thin words will still lose to a competitor with 1500 well-researched words and no alt text. Prioritise alt text on images that carry meaning: product photos, charts, diagrams, screenshots. Decorative images should use alt="" instead, which tells browsers and screen readers they can be skipped.

## Good alt text vs. bad

Here are three versions of the same product image. Notice the difference:

<!-- Missing: no alt attribute at all -->
<img src="widget-pro-hero.jpg" />

<!-- Generic: technically has alt but says nothing -->
<img src="widget-pro-hero.jpg" alt="product" />

<!-- Useful: descriptive, specific, actionable -->
<img 
  src="widget-pro-hero.jpg" 
  alt="Widget Pro industrial timer, aluminium body with stainless fasteners, mounted on DIN rail"
/>
Copy

The third version gives screen readers something meaningful to say and gives Google a concrete signal about what the image shows and why it matters to the page.

## How Scalpel flags it

The Media tab separates missing-alt (no alt attribute) from empty-alt (alt=""). Each missing alt is flagged individually so you can find it in the HTML and add a real description.