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AI Alt Text

How AIO Radar generates descriptive alt text for your images so AI systems can understand them.

What Is Alt Text, and Why AI Cares

Alt text is the alt attribute on an <img> tag — a short text description of what the

image shows. Screen readers have used it for accessibility for decades. AI crawlers rely on

it for the same underlying reason: they read text, not pixels.

Why This Matters

Alt text is the only description of an image that a crawler, a screen reader, or an

assistant can read.

An AI crawler fetching your page does not "look" at your photos the way a person does.

Whatever your image shows — a product, a location, a person, a chart — is invisible to

that crawler unless the alt text says what it is. A page full of undescribed images reads,

to a bot, as a page full of blank boxes.

How AIO Radar Generates Alt Text

  • The scanner finds images without alt text (or with generic placeholders like

    • image1.jpg, IMG_2043, or an empty string)

  • Each image is sent to an AI provider along with page context (title, surrounding text)
  • The AI generates a concise, descriptive alt text
  • You review and approve before it's applied (or enable auto-publish)

    • Viewing and Managing Alt Text

    Go to AIO Radar → Content → Alt Text to see:

  • Every image missing or with weak alt text
  • The AI-suggested description
  • Approve, edit, or reject each suggestion

    • Via WP-CLI

    bash
    # List images missing alt text
wp aio alt-text list --missing

# Generate for a specific image
wp aio alt-text generate --image-id=123

    Writing Good Alt Text Yourself

    If you'd rather write it yourself, or want to refine a generated suggestion:

  • Describe what's actually in the image, not what you hope it communicates
  • Keep it concise — one sentence is usually enough
  • Skip "image of" or "picture of" — assistive tech already knows it's an image
  • Include text that appears in the image (e.g., a price on a product photo)
  • Leave alt="" (empty, not missing) for purely decorative images

    • Good: alt="Zip-line platform over the Monteverde cloud forest canopy"

    Weak: alt="tour photo"

    Coverage

    AIO Radar → Content → Alt Text shows what share of your images have alt text and how

    many are still pending review. A page synced but not yet scanned for images shows as

    not detected yet, never a confident zero.

    Troubleshooting

    Alt Text Not Generating

  • Confirm the page has been synced
  • Check your AI provider key is configured and has available credits
  • Very small or icon-sized images may be skipped by design — check exclusion settings

    • Suggestion Doesn't Match the Image

    Report a mismatch and regenerate — the AI reads the image directly, so a mismatch usually

    means the image itself is ambiguous (e.g., a stock photo with no distinguishing detail).