Ebook reading systems often include text-to-speech (TTS) features. When images have text alternatives, these are read aloud, which can disrupt comprehension or become frustrating when the images are purely decorative. To ensure a smooth reading experience, decorative images must be correctly identified so they can be ignored by assistive technologies.

Objectives

• Prevent users who cannot perceive images (such as those using text-to-speech, screen readers, or immersive reading modes) from being distracted by irrelevant information.
• Ensure search engines and indexing robots process only relevant information.
• Improve content accessibility for people with disabilities.
• Enhance content discovery and indexing for search engines and digital tools.

Implementation

• Provide an empty alt attribute alt="" for every decorative img element.
• Assign role="presentation" to every decorative element.

Control

• Check the attributes of images that do not convey information necessary for understanding. This can be performed by inspecting the code or by reviewing the image table in the ACE accessibility report.