Accessibility alt text auditor

When to invoke

• You maintain a website/app content library and want to improve accessibility.
• You need an audit of missing or low-quality alt text for images.

Inputs needed

• A JSON export of images with fields: page, src, alt.
• Optional policy: minimum alt length, banned phrases, whether decorative images may be empty.

Workflow

1. Validate input records and normalize text.
2. Score each image:
   • Missing alt
   • Empty alt (allowed only if decorative)
   • Too short / too long
   • Generic alt (e.g., “image”, “photo”, file names)
3. Produce a remediation list sorted by severity.
4. Summarize coverage and common issues.

Output format

• JSON report:
  • summary metrics
  • issues[] with per-image findings and suggested fix hints

Guardrails

• This is a heuristic audit; do not claim WCAG compliance.
• Do not fetch remote images or attempt vision-based descriptions.

Reference code

• accessibility_alt_text_auditor.py reads image metadata JSON and outputs an audit JSON.