Leeres alt und das verborgene dekorative Bild

For decorative images, the right move is an empty alt: write alt equals two quotation marks with nothing inside.

An empty alt marks the image as decorative, so screen readers skip it completely and never announce it.

Empty alt and a missing alt are totally different. Empty means skip me on purpose; missing means the author forgot.

With no alt at all, many screen readers fall back to reading the file name aloud, like IMG underscore 4823 dot jpg.

The rule is simple: every img needs an alt attribute. The only question is whether it is empty or filled.

Visual spacers, lines, and dividers carry no meaning, so they are textbook cases for an empty alt.

Do not put a space between the quotes. A real empty alt has nothing inside, not even a single blank character.

If an image is truly decorative, often the cleanest fix is a CSS background image, which the accessibility tree ignores entirely.

You can also hide a decorative graphic with aria-hidden set to true, common for inline SVG icons beside visible text.

Be careful: never put an empty alt or aria-hidden on an informative image, or you silently delete it for some users.

If a decorative image sits inside a link, the link still needs accessible text somewhere, or it becomes unnamed.

Spot the difference that matters.

Well done! Empty alt intentionally hides decoration, missing alt is a bug, and aria-hidden or CSS backgrounds also keep ornament quiet.