The quickest way to find an image’s alt text is to inspect its live <img> element in your browser’s developer tools. In Chrome, right-click the image, choose Inspect, then read the value in alt="..." in the Elements panel. An empty alt="" usually means the image is intentionally decorative. Use the Accessibility panel when you need the name actually exposed to assistive technology.
What alt text is—and what you are looking for
Alt text is the text alternative associated with an image. For a normal HTML image, it is the value of the alt attribute:
<img src="team.jpg" alt="The support team in the London office">It is normally not printed beside the image. Screen readers can announce it, and browsers can show it when an image cannot be displayed. The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative’s Technique H37 states: “When using the img element, specify a short text alternative with the alt attribute.”
Method 1: Inspect the image in Chrome
- Open the page containing the image.
- Right-click the image and select Inspect. You can also open DevTools with
F12orCtrl+Shift+I(Windows/Linux) orCommand+Option+I(macOS), then activate the element picker. - Confirm that the highlighted node is the image you meant to check. Look for an
<img>element in the Elements panel. - Read the text between
alt="and the closing quote. For example, inalt="Red bicycle beside a canal", the alt text is “Red bicycle beside a canal.” - If there is no
altattribute at all, record it as missing. If the markup containsalt="", the attribute exists but its value is intentionally empty.
DevTools shows the live DOM—the markup the browser is currently using. This matters on sites that insert images, lazy-load them, or change attributes with JavaScript after the initial page response.
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Use the Accessibility panel for the computed name
With the image selected, open the Accessibility pane in Chrome DevTools. It shows the accessibility tree, role, and computed name reported to assistive technology. The computed name can be affected by surrounding links, captions, ARIA attributes, or other markup, so it may not be identical to the literal alt value.
Use the Elements panel when you need to copy the exact HTML attribute. Use the Accessibility pane when you need to understand what a screen reader is likely to receive.
Method 2: View the page source
- Open the page menu and choose View Page Source (the exact wording varies by browser), or prefix the address with
view-source:where supported. - Search for the image filename,
<img, or a distinctive part of the image URL. - Read the corresponding
altattribute.
Page Source shows the HTML downloaded from the server, while DevTools shows the live DOM after scripts have run. If an image is missing from Page Source but visible on the page, or its alt text differs, the site is probably generating or modifying it in the browser. For accessibility review, treat the live DOM and Accessibility pane as the more relevant evidence.
Other ways to reveal alt attributes
Accessibility and Web Developer toolbars
Accessibility extensions and Web Developer toolbars can list every image’s alt attribute, replace images with their text alternatives, and flag images without an alt attribute. They are useful when checking a whole page instead of one image. Install only tools you trust, and remember that an automated warning cannot decide whether wording is meaningful in context.
Automated scanners
Auditing tools can identify missing attributes and some obvious failures at scale. They cannot reliably judge whether “hero.jpg” communicates the image’s purpose, whether a chart’s key data is available elsewhere, or whether a linked image describes its destination. Pair automated results with a human review of the page.
How to interpret the value you find
Meaningful images
The alternative should communicate the same purpose or information the image provides, usually in a short phrase. It should not simply repeat the filename or list every visible detail. For a product photo, identify the product and the detail that matters to the page; for a diagram, identify its subject and point readers to the longer explanation nearby.
Decorative images
An empty value—alt=""—normally tells assistive technology to skip the image. This is appropriate for flourishes, separators, background decoration, and imagery that adds no information beyond nearby text. An empty value is not automatically an error, and a missing attribute is not equivalent to an intentional empty value.
Images inside links or buttons
When an image is the control, its alternative should communicate the destination or action. If a linked image sits beside visible link text that already gives the destination, a null alt can prevent the same words from being announced twice. Check the Accessibility pane to see the resulting name of the link or button.
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If the image contains important words that are not available as real text, include those words in the alternative. Do not rely on a screenshot of a headline, label, or warning to make that information accessible.
Charts and infographics
A short alt can identify the subject, such as “Quarterly revenue by region.” Detailed values and relationships should also appear in nearby prose or an equivalent table. A single long alt string is rarely a good substitute for structured data.
When there is no alt attribute
CSS background images
A background image applied with CSS is not an <img>, so it has no alt attribute. Inspect the element’s Accessibility information and surrounding text. If the background conveys essential information, the page needs an accessible text alternative in the content or control that uses it.
SVG
Inline SVG can expose a title, an ARIA label, or surrounding link text instead of an alt attribute. Inspect the SVG node and then check its computed role and name in the Accessibility pane.
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Canvas
A canvas element has no alt attribute. Look for fallback text, an ARIA label, or an adjacent description. If the canvas displays data, a text or table equivalent should be available.
Lazy-loaded and script-generated images
Scroll the image into view and wait for it to load, then inspect it again. Some sites start with a placeholder and replace it with a real <img>; others set alt after JavaScript runs.
Choosing the right checking method
| Method | Best for | What it reveals | Limitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inspect in Elements | One image | Literal live alt attribute |
Requires selecting the correct node |
| Accessibility pane | Understanding assistive-technology output | Computed name, role, and accessibility tree | May combine several sources of naming |
| View Page Source | Checking server-delivered markup | Original HTML response | Misses changes made after load |
| Extension or toolbar | Many images on one page | Lists, displays, or flags alt attributes | Cannot judge contextual quality by itself |
| Automated scanner | Site-wide monitoring | Missing attributes and detectable patterns | Needs human review for meaning and purpose |
A practical workflow for checking a page or site
- Start with one representative image and inspect its live
<img>node. - Record whether the attribute is meaningful, empty, or missing.
- Open the Accessibility pane and check the computed name, role, and any link or button that contains the image.
- Check charts, screenshots, logos, and text-in-image separately; they need different alternatives.
- Use an extension or scanner for coverage across the page or site.
- Review every flagged result in its page context. A scanner can find an empty or missing value, but only a person can decide whether the wording preserves the image’s purpose.
Troubleshooting common problems
Inspect opens a parent container instead of the image
Activate DevTools’ element picker and click the visible pixels, or expand the selected node until you find the nested <img>. A link, figure, or picture element may wrap the image.
The image has no alt, but the page seems accessible
It may be decorative, a CSS background, an SVG, or a canvas. Check the Accessibility pane and nearby text before labeling it a failure. For a normal informative <img>, however, the absence of an alt attribute should be investigated.
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Inspect the parent link or button and look for visible text, ARIA labels, captions, or other naming sources. The computed name represents the accessibility tree, not just one HTML attribute.
View Source cannot find the image
The image may be inserted by JavaScript, loaded only after scrolling, or represented by CSS. Inspect the live DOM after the page finishes loading instead.
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The alt text is an unhelpful filename
The attribute exists, but existence is not the same as quality. Judge whether it conveys the image’s purpose and replace filename-like wording with a concise, contextual alternative.
DevTools labels differ from these instructions
Browser versions can rename panes or move them. Look for the Elements/Inspector view, an element picker, and an Accessibility or Accessibility Properties pane; the underlying inspection process is the same.
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If you need a clean visual capture of a page for an accessibility review, documentation, or a before-and-after record, ScreenshotNeo can take the screenshot through one API request. It does not return the HTML alt string, so use DevTools or source inspection when extracting the attribute itself. The API is useful when you want a repeatable image of the page without manually configuring a browser.
Before capture, ScreenshotNeo accepts cookie or consent banners and removes more than 60 known consent platforms, newsletter popups, and chat widgets; each step can be disabled. Bot checks or CAPTCHAs, blank pages, timeouts, failed loads, and cache hits are not billed, and the response identifies the result with X-Page-Verdict and X-Billed headers. Its MCP server supplies take_screenshot, get_page_info, and capture_pdf tools for Claude, Cursor, and other MCP clients.
See the ScreenshotNeo documentation for authentication and options. The following requests capture the page at https://example.com/page; replace that URL with the page you are reviewing.
cURL
curl -G "https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot" -d access_key=YOUR_API_KEY --data-urlencode url=https://example.com/page -o shot.webpPython
import requests
r = requests.get("https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot", params={"access_key": "YOUR_API_KEY", "url": "https://example.com/page"}, timeout=90)
open("shot.webp", "wb").write(r.content)Node.js
const q = new URLSearchParams({ access_key: 'YOUR_API_KEY', url: 'https://example.com/page' }); const res = await fetch(`https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot?${q}`);Plans and capture options
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Frequently asked questions
Can I see alt text without downloading the image?
Yes. The attribute is part of the page’s HTML, so inspecting the DOM or viewing source reveals it without saving the image file.
Does an empty alt value always indicate poor accessibility?
No. alt="" is normally the correct choice for an image that is purely decorative or already fully represented by nearby text.
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Inspect its computed accessibility name and role, then review nearby text, ARIA labeling, fallback content, or the link or control that contains it. CSS backgrounds, SVG, and canvas do not use an alt attribute in the same way.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I see alt text without downloading the image?
Yes. Inspect the page’s DOM or view its source; the alt attribute is HTML metadata and does not require saving the image.
Is alt=”” an error?
Not necessarily. An empty value normally marks decorative imagery that assistive technology should skip.
What if the visual is a CSS background, SVG, or canvas?
Check the Accessibility pane for its computed name and role, plus surrounding text or fallback content, because these objects do not expose a normal img alt attribute.
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