Alt Text Quiz
Test your alt text knowledge with the quiz below. You'll see 10 images from vims.edu in their web context. Choose which alt text option you think is best, and read the explanations after.
This quiz is rooted in guidance from the established web accessibility resources, but this is an evolving field and some answers are debatable. Questions or disagreements are welcome - contact jwcaterine@vims.edu. This quiz was developed with AI assistance. AI can make mistakes.
New to Alt Text? Review the basics before taking the quiz.
Alt Text Basics
Alt text (alternative text) is a short written description of an image. Screen readers read it aloud to people who can’t see the image, and it appears if the image fails to load.
When deciding what to put for alt text, ask yourself: what is the key takeaway a sighted person would get from this image?
Other Tips
- If there is no key takeaway — the image is purely decorative — the alt text can be left empty. Decorative means purely aesthetic: background textures, borders, dividers, generic stock graphics, and icons whose meaning is already carried by a nearby heading or label.
- Cascade requires alt text to be entered as the “Display Name,” so marking an image as decorative is not always an option.
- Be concise. Skip “image of” / “photo of” — screen readers already say it’s an image. Do name the image type when the type is itself information: a map, a chart, or a scientific illustration.
- A caption is not necessarily the same as alt text. Often it’s a good idea to provide both, but keep in mind a screen-reader user may hear both.
- Cascade is the exception: the “Image description” you set when inserting an image fills the caption and the alt text both, so they will match. Write one line that works as both.
- When feasible, provide underlying data for images of charts, maps, etc. as an accessible table, paragraph, or download.
Ready for the quiz?