WCAG 1.1.1 Plus CLS Risk In One Pass — Image Alt Audit

Two things break on images independently: accessibility (alt text) and performance (width/height). Most audits check one or the other. This one checks both in a single pass because the fixes are almost always shipped together.

The Image Alt Audit pulls every <img> on a page and grades each against the signals that move WCAG 1.1.1 compliance + Core Web Vitals CLS.

The six failure modes per image

1. No alt attribute. The element has no alt at all. WCAG 1.1.1 failure. Screen readers announce the filename, which is usually gibberish.
2. Empty alt="" without role="presentation". Meant for decorative images; fine when correctly used, harmful when applied to content images. The tool distinguishes based on context.
3. Filename-as-alt. alt="IMG_4821.jpg" or alt="hero-banner-final-v3". Human authored, but the LLM that processes a screen reader request still sees nonsense. The tool detects common filename patterns.
4. Alt under 5 characters. Almost always useless ("cat" is fine; "c" is not). Often a copy-paste error.
5. Alt over 125 characters. Screen readers truncate or pause awkwardly. Consider moving long descriptions to longdesc or a figure caption.
6. Missing width / height attributes. Classic CLS contributor. The browser doesn't know the image's aspect ratio at parse time, so it reserves zero space, then jumps when the image loads. Core Web Vitals penalty.

The AI fix prompt

After audit, one click emits a prompt listing every flagged image with its current state, then asks an LLM to write useful 5-125 character alt strings describing the image content (not "image of X") and emit ready-to-paste <img> snippets with width, height, and loading="lazy" included.

Related reading

• WCAG Accessibility Audit — full WCAG 2.2 AA pass
• WCAG Fix Generator — companion fix tool
• Core Web Vitals Audit — page-weight + LCP / CLS / INP
• Content Credentials — C2PA provenance for images

Fact-check notes and sources

• WCAG 1.1.1 Non-text Content: w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Understanding/non-text-content.html
• CLS and aspect-ratio: web.dev/articles/cls
• ADA accessibility lawsuit rates: seyfarth.com/news-insights (annual ADA litigation report)

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The $97 Launch covers shipping accessible + performant sites from day one. The audit is the checkpoint before every deploy.