Skip to content
Wiki
Images
Images of Text

Images of Text

[...] text is used to convey information rather than images of text [...]

WCAG 1.4.5 (opens in a new tab)

Images of Text prevent screen readers from being able to read the content of the image, and prevents users that rely on some text altering technologies from from being able to assist the user from reading it. For example, a user with dyslexia may use a browser extension that changes the font of the text to a more readable font.

Some exceptions exist such as logos counting as "essential", or images that support enough customisation for the user. However it's best to just use text to convey information to benefit from the most compatibility with assistive technologies.

How to fix

The best approach to this is to either replace the image with text, or augment the image with supplementary text.

Some images may be used to be very decorative and styled, and contain important text. In this case, text can be added as a caption to cover the important content.

Otherwise if the text is just being stylised, then replicating the style in CSS as closely as possible to allow users to customise the text to their needs is helpful for those that may not be able to read it in the image form.

References