AI Image Alt Text Generator

Audit websites for accessibility issues by identifying images with missing or inadequate alt text. Extract contextual information to help generate meaningful alt text descriptions.

Features

• Missing Alt Detection: Identify all images without alt text
• Context Extraction: Capture nearby text, captions, and parent elements for context
• Smart Filtering: Exclude small decorative images (icons, spacers)
• Dimension Analysis: Extract image width/height when available
• Accessibility Audit: Perfect for WCAG compliance checks

Input Configuration

Start URLs

List of URLs to crawl for image accessibility analysis. The actor follows same-domain links automatically.

Max Pages (default: 50)

Maximum number of pages to crawl and analyze.

Only Missing Alt Text (default: true)

When enabled, only extracts images with missing or empty alt attributes. Disable to audit all images.

Exclude Small Images (default: true)

Skip images smaller than 50x50 pixels to filter out decorative icons, spacers, and tracking pixels.

Output Schema

{
  "url": "https://example.com/page",
  "imageUrl": "https://example.com/images/photo.jpg",
  "currentAlt": "",
  "hasMissingAlt": true,
  "suggestedContext": "Product showcase featuring...",
  "parentElement": "figure.gallery-item",
  "imageDimensions": "800x600",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-02-11T10:30:00.000Z"
}

Output Fields

• url: Page where the image was found
• imageUrl: Absolute URL of the image
• currentAlt: Current alt text (empty if missing)
• hasMissingAlt: Boolean indicating if alt text is missing
• suggestedContext: Nearby text for generating alt text (from captions, siblings, parent)
• parentElement: HTML parent element (e.g., "figure.gallery", "div#hero")
• imageDimensions: Width x height in pixels (or "unknown")
• scrapedAt: Timestamp of extraction

Use Cases

• Accessibility Audits: Identify WCAG compliance issues
• SEO Improvement: Find images that need descriptive alt text
• Content Quality: Ensure all images have meaningful descriptions
• Bulk Alt Text Generation: Export data to AI services for automated alt text creation
• Accessibility Training: Generate reports for content teams

Context Extraction Logic

The actor intelligently extracts context in this priority order:

1. Figure captions: <figcaption> elements within <figure> tags
2. Parent element text: Text content from immediate parent
3. Sibling text: Content from previous/next elements
4. Title attribute: Image title attribute if present

This context helps AI services or humans write appropriate alt text.

Best Practices

1. Run with onlyMissingAlt: true for focused accessibility audits
2. Keep excludeSmallImages: true to filter decorative images
3. Export results and use the suggestedContext field for AI-powered alt text generation
4. Re-run periodically to track accessibility improvements
5. Combine with SEO audits for comprehensive site analysis

Cost Optimization

This actor uses Cheerio (lightweight HTML parsing) and is extremely cost-efficient:

• 50 pages: ~0.01 compute units
• 500 pages: ~0.05 compute units

Perfect for large-scale accessibility audits without breaking the budget.

Accessibility Impact

Adding proper alt text makes websites:

• Screen-reader friendly for visually impaired users
• More discoverable in image search
• Compliant with WCAG 2.1 guidelines
• Better for SEO and content indexing

Use this actor as the first step in your accessibility improvement workflow.