Accessibility-alt-text-bot

This action reminds users to add a meaningful alternative text to their images. Alternative text helps users who rely on tools like screen readers, and lowers accessibility barriers.

The action can check:

• Issue comments
• Issue descriptions
• Pull Request comments
• Pull Request descriptions
• Discussion comments
• Discussion descriptions

To learn how to write good alternative text, read Alternative text for images on Primer.

Why you may need this action

Images on GitHub default to using the filename as alt text. This action flags when the alt text has not been updated from the default:

Tip

Normally, setting alt="" marks images as decorative. But GitHub renders all images as a link. To avoid rendering links with no names, we recommend always setting alt text on images in GitHub.

How to add this action to your repo

Copy this workflow into any repo you want the accessibility-alt-text-bot to run in:

name: Accessibility-alt-text-bot
on:
  issues:
    types: [opened, edited]
  pull_request:
    types: [opened, edited]
  issue_comment:
    types: [created, edited, deleted]
  discussion:
    types: [created, edited]
  discussion_comment:
    types: [created, edited, deleted]

permissions:
  issues: write
  pull-requests: write
  discussions: write

jobs:
  accessibility_alt_text_bot:
    name: Check alt text is set on issue or pull requests
    if: ${{ !endsWith(github.actor, '[bot]') }}
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Get action 'github/accessibility-alt-text-bot'
        uses: github/accessibility-alt-text-bot@v1.7.2  # Set to latest

Pin the action's version for stability

We recommend you pin the action to a specific version. This makes sure you stay on a stable version of this action.

       uses: github/accessibility-alt-text-bot@v1.7.2

Replace the ref value with any commit hash.

Experimental: Adding a custom linting configuration

If you would like to include more linting rules from the markdownlint or markdownlint-github rulesets, pass a config object to the github/accessibility-alt-text-bot action.

⚠ Consider adding new rules sparingly, as excessive rules could make the bot too noisy and overwhelm users.

⚠ This feature is experimental and may be removed in the future. We acknowledge that some repositories may want to implement more accessibility checks and aim to evaluate how users this feature before making it generally available.

    steps:
      - name: Check alt text
        uses: github/accessibility-alt-text-bot@v1.7.2
        with:
          config: |
            no-default-alt-text: true,
            no-alt-text: true,
            no-empty-alt-text: true,
            no-generic-link-text: true,

License

This project is licensed under the terms of the MIT open source license. Please read the MIT license file for the full terms.

Maintainers

See CODEOWNERS.

Support

TODO: Be explicit about support expectations.

Acknowledgement

Please read our Contributing Guide for more information.

Contributors ✨

Thanks goes to these wonderful people (emoji key):

Katie Foster 🤔 ️️️️♿️

Kendall Gassner 💻 ️️️️♿️ 📖 🚇

Kate Higa 💻 ️️️️♿️ 📖 🚇

HonkingGoose 📖 ️️️️♿️

Eric Gallager 🚧 🤔

This project follows the all-contributors specification. Contributions of any kind welcome!