ImageSEO Says Alt Text Gaps Persist as DOJ Accessibility Deadline Nears

A review of WebAIM’s 2026 data and ImageSEO’s own audit finds many top home pages still missing image alternative text, even as a federal accessibility deadline for larger U.S. local governments approaches in 2027. The findings highlight a continuing compliance risk for publishers, brands and public agencies as websites add more images and more accessibility errors.

Why it matters: - Image alternative text remains one of the most common web accessibility failures. - The issue affects screen reader users and organizations that need to meet accessibility standards. - The U.S. Department of Justice deadline for larger state and local governments arrives April 26, 2027. - Websites that rely on image-heavy home pages face growing exposure if alt text is missing or inaccurate.

What happened: - ImageSEO reviewed the 2026 WebAIM Million report and paired it with its own audit of top-ranked home pages. - WebAIM found images with missing alternative text on 53.1% of the top one million home pages. - WebAIM said missing alt text was the second most common accessibility failure after low-contrast text. - The WebAIM dataset showed an average of 66.6 images per home page, up 13.6% year over year. - WebAIM found 16.2% of images, or 10.8 per page, had missing alternative text. - WebAIM found 95.9% of home pages had detected WCAG 2 failures, up from 94.8% in 2025. - The average number of errors rose to 56.1 per page from 51.

The details: - ImageSEO’s July 2026 audit reviewed 306,634 images on 5,306 reachable home pages from the 10,000 highest-ranked domains on the Tranco list. - In that sample, 67.7% of images had non-empty alt text. - Another 21.0% used alt="". - A further 11.3% had no alt attribute. - At least one image with no alt attribute appeared on 37.1% of the sites. - ImageSEO found 24.3% of sites described every homepage image. - The two studies use different methods and are not directly comparable. - The W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative says decorative images should use a null alt value so screen readers can ignore them. - Images that carry information need a text description. - The Department of Justice’s Title II web accessibility rule covers state and local governments. - An interim final rule published April 20, 2026 moved the compliance date to April 26, 2027 for entities with a population of 50,000 or more. - The same rule set April 26, 2028 for smaller entities and special district governments. - The Justice Department’s explanation of the rule uses an image without alt text as an example of content a screen reader cannot convey. - The full audit data is available at the full audit data.

Between the lines: - The accessibility problem is not just about missing alt text. It is also about whether descriptions match the role of each image. - Empty alt text can be correct for decorative images, so simple counts do not tell the whole story. - Automated tools can surface gaps quickly, but human review is still needed to judge meaning and context. - The DOJ timeline raises the stakes for public-sector websites and for vendors that support them.

What's next: - Organizations with large audiences and image-heavy home pages may need to audit alt text before the 2027 deadline. - Larger state and local governments should expect compliance pressure to increase as the deadline approaches. - ImageSEO says generated descriptions should be reviewed before publication. - ImageSEO offers a free plan that covers 10 images per month with no credit card. - Paid plans start at 4.99 euros per month.

The bottom line: - Alt text gaps remain widespread, and the federal compliance clock is ticking for many public websites.