This translation has not been editorially reviewed yet. The German version is authoritative. Deutsche Fassung
Accessibility
Why is real text on websites better than text in an image?
Real text is better than text in an image because it can do everything an image can't: screen readers read it aloud, visitors can zoom it without any loss of quality, Google can search it, and translation tools can render it in other languages. An offer with opening hours embedded as a photo is invisible to all of these routes.
Text in an image is silent text
The classic case: the graphics team designs a beautiful promo banner — price, period, and conditions appear as lettering within the image. For sighted visitors, that looks good. For every other system, it's a dead end: a blind visitor's screen reader can't turn the pixels into speech, the letters become pixelated and blurry when zoomed in, Google finds neither the price nor the promotion, and automatic translation into English fails completely. On top of that comes the maintenance burden: every price change needs a graphic designer. The rule allows exceptions where the graphical form is essential — your logo, of course, may remain an image.
How our audit handles images of text
Whether text is hidden inside an image only becomes apparent once you look at the image's content — a machine would have to read every image like a human would and then judge whether the graphical form is essential, or whether the text could just as well exist as real text. That judgment call is a human task. Our measurement engine doesn't claim anything here that it can't measure: the criterion appears in the report as a human check point. At the Gold Standard level, an auditor reviews the images on your pages and flags banners, buttons, and graphics whose text content should be implemented as real text — along with a recommendation for how the design can be preserved in the process.
Examples
Heading as graphic
<img src="ueberschrift-angebote.png" alt="Unsere Angebote"><h2 class="marke">Unsere Angebote</h2>
<style>.marke { font-family: "Hausschrift", sans-serif; }</style>Real text can be enlarged, changed, translated and searched. House writing comes as web writing.
- Search your website for banners and tiles where prices, dates, or phone numbers appear as an image — convert exactly this content first.
- Ask your agency to separate design from text: background image as an image, text as real text on top.
- Select text on your page with your mouse — anything that can't be selected is an image and belongs on the check list.
- Keep your logo as an image with good alt text — the graphical-form exception applies here.
- Keep the side benefit in mind: every piece of text you convert becomes visible to Google and strengthens your findability.
