Alt Text for Headshots: 12 Examples, Name Plus Role
By AutoBoost Team · 2026-10-29 · 6 min read
The longest headshot alt text we found ran to 178 characters. It described a t-shirt and a railing and never gave a surname or job title. On 29 October 2026 we fetched the HTML of 70 About us and Team pages from 69 UK sites, covering agencies, law firms, charities and small businesses. 45 pages loaded, and the other 25 blocked us or returned an error, so we skipped them. About 17 sites had staff photos we could read. The table shows 12 alt texts from 10 of them, copied exactly as they appear in the page source.
Key takeaways
- Seven of the 12 examples had a fault. Four of those seven were a label or file name where a person's name should be, such as "Staff 400" and "Untitled design (23).png".
- The best alt texts were 27 to 39 characters long and followed one pattern: name, then job title.
- Several sites left the alt empty on every headshot, which is fine when the person's name sits right next to the photo.
- Nobody in our table had a missing alt attribute. The trouble was what the text said.
Twelve staff photo alt texts as served
Characters are counted from the alt text as written, without trailing spaces.
| Site | Alt text | Characters | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mishcon de Reya | Shulamit Aberbach, Trainee Solicitor | 36 | Good |
| Leeds GATE | Annie Hall Mental Health Support Worker | 39 | Good |
| Intensive Care Society | Maryah Tafri Head of Events | 27 | Good |
| Torchbox | empty | 0 | Fine (name and role sit in the link below the photo) |
| Guts UK | Katie is smiling at the camera and wearing a Guts UK t-shirt. | 61 | Fine (has a name, but describes a t-shirt) |
| Intensive Care Society | Untitled design (23).png | 24 | Fault: file name (photo of the Chief Executive) |
| Hallam | amber-carnegie | 14 | Fault: looks like a file name |
| CHECT | Black and white image of Richard Ashton, CHECT CEO | 50 | Fault: starts with "image of" and describes colour |
| Birketts | Clive Adams Greg Allan profile picture | 38 | Fault: names two people, and says "profile picture" |
| Noah's Ark Children's Hospice | Staff 400 | 9 | Fault: a label, not a person |
| Guts UK | Suzanne is outside, she is standing up with her arm leaning on a railing. She is wearing a Guts UK branded t-shirt and glasses. Her hair is tied up. She is smiling at the camera. | 178 | Fault: too long, and no surname or role |
| Creative Direction | Creative Team crop 1 | 20 | Fault: reads like an editing label (a team photo) |
The Mishcon alt text ends with a space in the source, and the Intensive Care Society one ends with a non-breaking space. We left both out of the count.
Name first, then job title
The three good examples gave the person's name and their job title, and nothing else.
- The name comes first. A screen reader user has no other way to know who is in the photo.
- The role comes second. "Trainee Solicitor", "Mental Health Support Worker" and "Head of Events" tell a visitor why this person is on the page. A short role is also more useful than a description of a face.
- Faces and clothes stay out. Hair, smiles and t-shirts add length and no meaning. Guts UK is the one site that wrote this way, and it has a reason to, because its page is built for people with a bowel condition and some visitors may want that detail. For most business sites, name and role are enough.
- "Photo of" and "profile picture" stay out. CHECT and Birketts both repeat what the screen reader already says.
- So does the colour treatment. CHECT starts every alt with "Black and white image of". That is a style choice, and it does not help anyone know who is pictured.
- Check the name against the card. The Birketts photo sits on the card for Clive Adams, but the alt text also names Greg Allan. Slips like this are easy to make on a page with dozens of people.
Group photos and the team shot
For a group photo, name the team and say what they are doing. The one team photo we found was called "Creative Team crop 1", which tells a visitor nothing. "The Creative Direction team around a table" would do the job, and if the people are named in the caption you do not need to name them again.
When an empty alt is correct
Torchbox, Kingsley Napley and Propel Digital all used an empty alt on the headshots we read (20 of 20 on the Torchbox team list, and 8 of 8 on Propel's page). On Torchbox the person's name and role sit in a link directly under the photo. Repeating them in the alt would make a screen reader say the name twice, so an empty alt is the right call in that layout.
The risk is inconsistency. On the EMDR Association team page, most photos have the person's name as alt text, but Justin Havens' photo has an empty alt. Pick one approach for the whole page.
Labels, file names and doubled names
We counted these from the 12 rows.
- File name or editing label instead of a person: 4. Intensive Care Society ("Untitled design (23).png"), Hallam ("amber-carnegie"), Noah's Ark ("Staff 400") and Creative Direction ("Creative Team crop 1").
- "Image of" or "profile picture" padding: 2. CHECT and Birketts.
- Wrong or doubled name: 1. Birketts names two people on one card.
- Too long: 1. The 178 character Guts UK example.
Some faults overlap, so these add up to more than the seven rows with a fault. The Noah's Ark page shows a related problem. Its alt texts include "Tagore Charles 1" and "Tagore Charles 2", and "Staff 401" next to "Staff 400". A number on a name, or a generic label, suggests the text was generated from the file name instead of written.
Why a name and role beat a long description
Eleven of the 12 examples have text. Their lengths run from 9 to 178 characters, and the median is 36. The good examples sit between 27 and 39 characters, which is a name and a job title. The shortest example, "Staff 400" at 9 characters, is the worst, and the 178 character one is read in full for every person on the page. If your alt text is longer than a name, a job title and perhaps a firm name, cut it. Anything over about 60 characters is probably describing something the visitor does not need.
Tip: check the name before you approve
Staff photos are uploaded once and forgotten, so the alt is often a file name or empty by default. When a draft arrives for a headshot, compare it with the person on the page, and confirm the job title is the right one. People photos shown in other places have the same needs, as our guides to social media image alt text and property photo alt text show. The full workflow is in the main guide to bulk alt text.
The free AutoBoost SEO plugin is the link between your WordPress site and the AutoBoost SEO app. In the app you can have alt text written in bulk for any image in your posts that lacks it, check each draft, and save it to the post and the media library.