Alt Text for Social Media Images: 12 Real Examples
By AutoBoost Team · 2026-10-29 · 7 min read
Instagram feed plugins paste the whole caption into the alt attribute, and it shows. 105 of the 128 feed photos that had alt text were over 125 characters, and the longest ran to 1,964. On 29 October 2026 we fetched the pages of 152 sites, most of them listed as users of Instagram feed plugins, and read the HTML of each one. Most load their feed with JavaScript, so a plain fetch showed no photos at all. 12 sites put their feed photos in the page source, which gave us 138 feed images. The table quotes 12 of them, copied from the HTML as it was served that day.
Key takeaways
- The caption becomes the alt text. The median feed photo had about 465 characters of it.
- 87 of the 128 contained a hashtag, 29 contained a web address and 89 contained an emoji. Those belong in a caption, not an alt attribute.
- Only 10 of the 138 were empty, and 7 of those 10 were the round profile photo at the top of the feed. That is a sound use of an empty alt, because the account name is written next to it as text.
- None of the 12 we quote described what is in the picture. The best were short captions that happened to name the subject.
Twelve feed photos, captions and all
| Site | Alt text | Characters | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| WP Social Ninja | The kind of bag that earns stares and compliments. #fyp #fashion #styl ... | 84 | Fault: a caption with hashtags. It never says what the bag looks like. |
| WP Social Ninja | js.commerce7 | 12 | Fine. It is the profile photo and the alt names the account. |
| The Cinema Company | empty | 0 | Good. Empty alt on the round profile photo, because the account name is written next to it as text. |
| The House That Lars Built | Anyone else on the tin embossing train?! I’m loving it! Comment SUPPLI ... | 91 | Fine. Short, and it names the craft, but it ends on a call to action. |
| 88 Queen St | Rainy day + Cozy = Hatley sweater ✨ https://www.88queenst.com/product/ ... | 86 | Fine. It names the item, but it carries a web address. |
| The Jenna Way | Tag someone who could never 😂🚐 | 30 | Fault: a call to action that says nothing about the photo. |
| Sly Fox | Learn more on our website! 🌐 sly-fox.ca #BusinessQuotes #Quotes #LondonON | 74 | Fault: an advert line with hashtags. Nothing about the image. |
| Saltmoore | As the clocks go back, the days grow shorter and the evenings a little ... | 243 | Fault: too long. The whole caption was used as the alt text. |
| Supermug | 🔆☕ FOUR #WHEELS MOVE THE #BODY TWO WHEELS MOVE THE SOUL 🛣🏍️ ➕ VIEW MOR ... | 661 | Fault: too long, with capital-letter hashtags, a web address and a sales list. |
| PAN UK | Citrus fruits like lemons, limes, and oranges are commonly sprayed wit ... | 1310 | Fault: too long. A full campaign post pasted in as alt text. |
| Sushi Yoko | 🥢 Looks like a restaurant. Takes 5 minutes.Seared outside, rare inside ... | 1772 | Fault: too long, with a caption in three languages. |
| Louise Carron Harris | Can I ask you a question? When was the last time you truly felt alive? ... | 1913 | Fault: too long. Nearly 2,000 characters. |
Alt text is cut after about 70 characters where it is long, and line breaks are shown as spaces. The character count is for the full text. Each link goes to the exact page we fetched.
What a feed photo should say instead
We found one good example and three fine ones, so this section covers what they did and then what the rest of the feed should have done.
- The profile photo can be empty. The Cinema Company leaves the alt empty on the round account photo, because the account name sits next to it as text. A screen reader skips it and loses nothing. The WP Social Ninja demo instead uses the account name,
js.commerce7, which also works. - Name the subject, once. The best captions in the table are the short ones that say what the post is about. 88 Queen St says "Hatley sweater". The House That Lars Built says "tin embossing train". That is the useful part of a caption, and it is only a few words.
- Describe the photo, not the post. A feed photo is a picture of something, so write what is in it, for example "Grey wool sweater on a hanger" if that is what the photo shows. The caption can ask people to like, save or comment. The alt text cannot do that job.
Captions pasted in as alt text
Counted from the table, 8 of the 12 had a fault, 3 were fine and 1 was good.
| Fault | Rows | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Too long, whole caption used | 5 | Saltmoore, Supermug, PAN UK, Sushi Yoko, Louise Carron Harris |
| Caption or advert line, nothing about the photo | 3 | WP Social Ninja, The Jenna Way, Sly Fox |
Across all 8 faults the cause is the same. The tool copied the caption into the alt attribute and nobody wrote anything for the photo. Within the table, 5 rows contained a hashtag, 5 contained a web address and 5 contained an emoji. Across all 138 feed photos we read, 10 were empty and none was missing the attribute. The tool does one thing correctly, in that it always writes an alt attribute. It just fills it with the wrong text.
What a feed alt should leave out:
- Calls to action. "Tag someone who could never" and "Learn more on our website" appear as alt text. A listener hears an instruction with no photo to go with it.
- Hashtags. 87 of the 128 had them, and a screen reader can read each one out, word by word.
- Web addresses and sales lists. Supermug's alt includes a product link, a shop address and a list of delivery claims.
- Emoji strings. 89 of the 128 had emoji, and screen readers may announce each one by name.
- A second language. Sushi Yoko's alt repeats its caption in English, German and Japanese. Pick one, and match the page.
Why 125 characters is the line
Our numbers for the 128 feed photos that had text:
- The middle value was about 465 characters. Half of all feed photos had more than that.
- 23 were 125 characters or under, and 105 were over. 89 were over 250, and 59 were 500 or more.
- The shortest was 12 characters, the account name on a profile photo. The longest was 1,964.
- Seven of the 12 table rows were 91 characters or fewer. Three of those seven were still faults, because short does not mean useful.
A photo alt should usually be one short sentence of 125 characters at most. If the caption is longer, keep it on the page as visible text. The alt only has to say what the photo shows.
Tip: open your own page source
If your site shows an Instagram feed with a plugin, check what it puts in the alt attribute. 10 of the 12 sites we read use the Smash Balloon Instagram Feed plugin, going by its folder names in their page source. Sushi Yoko and WP Social Ninja use other tools. Whatever you use, view the source of your own page and read what lands in the alt for each feed photo. Check the profile photo too, since an empty alt is fine there if the account name is written next to it.
Photos of people and places face the same pull towards pasting in whatever text is nearby, as our guides to headshot alt text and property photo alt text show, and the main bulk alt text guide explains how to fix a whole site. The free AutoBoost SEO plugin connects WordPress to the AutoBoost SEO app, which writes missing alt text for the images in your posts in bulk. You approve each one, and it saves to the post and to the media library. For a photo copied from social media, say what is in the picture in one sentence and leave the hashtags, links and call to action in the caption.