1.4.5 Images of Text

When text is baked into an image, users cannot resize it, change its colour, or have it read by a screen reader. This is a problem for people with low vision, cognitive disabilities, or those who use custom stylesheets.

Real text styled with CSS can be resized, recoloured, translated, and read aloud. It is almost always preferable to an image of text.

Exceptions exist for logotypes, where the text is part of a logo or brand identity, and for cases where a particular visual presentation is essential and cannot be achieved with CSS.

If you need a specific font or visual effect, use a web font with CSS rather than an image. Most visual effects that used to require images can now be achieved with CSS.

Where images of text are unavoidable, such as a scanned document or a photograph containing text, provide the text content in an adjacent description or as alt text.

Banners and promotional graphics often contain text as images. Consider whether the text could be overlaid as real text using CSS positioning instead.

• Promotional banners where the heading text is part of the image
• Infographics where all body text is baked into the image with no text alternative
• Testimonial quotes displayed as images of text