The playbook
Alt Text: How to Prioritize the Work
Prioritize alt text work by connecting an observed problem with the people or business outcomes it affects. The objective is to provide a text alternative that communicates an image's purpose to people who cannot see it. Give the team a short ordered queue with a reason for each decision, rather than treating every suggestion as equally urgent.
Put the task in context
For a linked image, the text alternative should communicate the link's purpose. For a chart, provide the important finding and an accessible explanation of the data. Purely decorative images usually need an empty alternative rather than a verbose description that adds no useful information.
Build a queue from observed problems
Collect candidate work with image, the current condition, and the reason it matters. The first pass should distinguish a confirmed defect from an improvement idea. An item affecting informative images with useful alternatives directly may deserve a different response from a preference with no observed effect.
Apply a practical decision order
| Order | Decision rule | Topic-specific starting point |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Resolve failures that block the intended task | Describe the purpose and provide longer explanations when needed |
| 2 | Restore missing information needed for the next decision | Determine whether an image is informative functional or decorative |
| 3 | Improve the most common supported use case | Describe necessary information in the current context |
| 4 | Verify the result before extending the change | Check image links buttons and complex diagrams separately |
Consider reach effort and confidence together
Estimate how many relevant items share the same problem, the effort needed to fix it, and how confident you are about the cause. Do not hide those judgments inside an unexplained score. A small confirmed repair may be more useful now than a large speculative project, even if the project's eventual upside is greater.
For example, stuffing keywords into every text alternative is a specific candidate for investigation. Check whether it occurs in one page or query record or across a repeated process. Where the same cause is confirmed, a shared correction may reduce repeated work. Where causes differ, preserve separate tasks instead of forcing them into one fix.
Write an actionable task
| Task element | Required detail |
|---|---|
| Scope | The relevant image and purpose |
| Observed problem | Stuffing keywords into every text alternative |
| Proposed correction | Describe the purpose and provide longer explanations when needed |
| Verification | Check image links buttons and complex diagrams separately |
| Owner | content or development owner |
Limit work in progress
Choose a small set of tasks the responsible owners can finish and verify. Starting every item at once increases the number of unresolved dependencies and makes it difficult to learn from the first changes. Complete the blocked or foundational work before taking on refinements that depend on it.
Revisit the queue when evidence changes
After the first changes, inspect informative images with useful alternatives and the observed condition that justified the work. Move an item up when evidence shows broader impact, or down when the assumed problem is not present. Keep the reason for reprioritization so the team can explain the decision without repeating the original investigation.
Search results and indexing decisions are not controlled by the publisher. Record what your team changed and what was observed afterward. Avoid turning a correlation between a release and a traffic change into a claim of proven causation.
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