How to find images with missing alt text

Published November 12, 2026

Alt text describes an image for people who can’t see it: screen-reader users, anyone whose images fail to load, and search engines. Pages with missing alt text are harder to use, and easy to fix once you know where they are.

Missing is not the same as empty

• No alt attribute at all: a problem. Screen readers may read out the file name instead.
• An empty alt="": intentional for purely decorative images, and correct for those. Review these case by case.

Find them with developer tools

Open the Console on any page and run:

Add .forEach(img => console.log(img.currentSrc)) to print their addresses. It works, but the list has no connection to what you see on the page.

Find them on the page, with numbers

Image Number Helper numbers every image on the page. The Pro Copy report button lists each number with its alt text, displayed size, original size and file name, as a Markdown table, plain text or CSV, and marks images without alt text. Paste it into a ticket or spreadsheet and the whole audit is in one place. The report flags images with empty alt text as well as missing ones, so check the decorative images before you “fix” them.

Writing good alt text

• Describe what the image is for, not every detail.
• Keep it short, usually a phrase or one sentence.
• Skip “image of” and “picture of”. Screen readers already announce it’s an image.
• If the image is a link or button, describe where it goes or what it does.
• Leave decorative images with alt="".

Related: how to reference images in a design review.