PDF Alt Text Checker

An image in a PDF is pixels, and pixels carry no meaning that software can convey. The only way a screen reader can describe a figure is if the document supplies a textual alternative in the `/Alt` entry on that figure’s structure element. Where `/Alt` is missing, the reader has nothing to announce — a chart central to the document’s argument is simply silence, or at best the word “graphic”. This tool lists every figure element it finds and reports which have alt text and which do not, with page references. It also checks something a simple presence test misses, which is the most common real failure: alt text that exists but is useless. Automated export pipelines routinely fill `/Alt` with the source filename, so a document technically passes every mechanical check while telling a reader “chart_final_v3.png”. Note also that purely decorative images should be marked as artifacts rather than given alt text, so that a reader skips them instead of hearing “decorative border” fourteen times.