---
name: Decorative image
slug: decorative-image
category: accessibility
status: published
created: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
modified: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
definition: An image that carries no information and is given an empty alt
  attribute so assistive technology skips it entirely.
aliases:
  - name: null alt
    source: community
  - name: empty alt
    source: community
  - name: alt=""
    source: html
  - name: pure decoration
    source: wcag
  - name: presentational image
    source: aria
tags:
  - assistive-tech
  - media
relations:
  contrastWith:
    - alt-text
    - presentation-role
    - aria-hidden
    - figure
  variantOf: []
  partOf: []
  seeAlso:
    - image
implementations: []
sources:
  - title: "WCAG 2.2: Non-text Content"
    url: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/#non-text-content
  - title: A11y Project checklist
    url: https://www.a11yproject.com/checklist/
demo: inline
exhibit: false
useWhen: the picture adds nothing a reader would miss
---

Some images say nothing. A flourish under a heading, a texture behind a card, a stock
photo of two people at a laptop, an icon sitting beside the word it already repeats.
For those the correct alternative text is no text: `alt=""`, which tells the browser
to drop the image out of the accessibility tree so a screen reader passes over it
without a word. WCAG calls this pure decoration, and it is the one case where writing
nothing is the accessible answer.

The decision test is short. Remove the image and read what is left. If nothing is
missing, it was decoration. If the caption, the heading, or the sentence beside it
already says the same thing, it is decoration too, because hearing it twice is worse
than not hearing it at all. If anything at all goes missing, the image is
informational and owes the reader a real alternative, and a chart or a screenshot
almost always does.

Empty is not the same as absent. `alt=""` is a deliberate statement that there is
nothing to say; an image with no `alt` attribute is an image whose author has not been
asked, and screen readers fall back to announcing the file name, which is how readers
end up hearing "hero underscore final two dot jpg". Both look identical on screen,
which is why automated checkers flag the missing one and cannot flag a wrong one.
`role="presentation"` and `aria-hidden="true"` reach the same result by other routes,
and for an `<img>` the empty attribute is the plain way to say it. Genuinely
background decoration can also stop being an image: a CSS `background-image` is never
in the tree in the first place.

Two traps. An image inside a link, with nothing else in that link, must not be
decorative: emptying its alt leaves the link with no name at all, so the alt has to
describe the destination rather than the picture. And an icon beside a text label is
decoration only while the label is really there. The moment the label is hidden at
small sizes, the icon is the only thing left and it needs the name back.