Modern digital platforms rely heavily on visuals to engage audiences and convey information quickly. However, as images become more prominent on websites and applications, ensuring accessibility for users who rely on screen readers has become a crucial responsibility for SaaS providers. Missing or inadequate alternative text (alt text) not only leads to poor user experiences for visually impaired people, but also exposes organizations to compliance risks. One solution that has proven effective for many SaaS teams is using it Monsido’s automated scanning platform to detect and help fix alt text issues in thousands of web elements.
TL;DR: SaaS teams managing large numbers of digital assets are increasingly turning to Monsido to automatically identify and resolve alt text issues. Monsido regularly scans sites, flags missing or inadequate descriptions and provides actionable insights for remediation. This makes compliance with accessibility standards like WCAG 2.1 much easier to enforce at scale. It also increases inclusivity and SEO through better content labeling.
Alt text: more than just an accessibility checkbox
Alt text performs a crucial function by providing written descriptions of images to users who rely on screen readers. It is an important principle of web accessibility guidelines such as WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), and non-compliance can mean exclusion for millions of visually impaired users. Additionally, alt text plays a crucial role in SEO by providing metadata that helps search engines understand image content.
Despite its importance, proper alt text implementation is often overlooked due to the scale and complexity of modern web applications. This is especially true for SaaS organizations with constantly evolving interfaces that can contain thousands of images, from icons and buttons to charts, infographics and photos. Manually reviewing and correcting each image is not only inefficient, but also practically infeasible in production environments where rapid updates are the norm.
The challenge of scale in SaaS environments
SaaS platforms operate in rapid development cycles. Product teams regularly release feature and interface updates, often introducing new images or changing existing images. In such scenarios, ensuring that every image has meaningful alt text becomes a moving target. Specific challenges include:
- The sheer volume of assets: Products can contain thousands of icons, user-uploaded images and diagrams, spread across different modules.
- Lack of central supervision: Multiple teams can be responsible for different parts of the platform, leading to inconsistencies in how alt text is applied.
- Time-consuming manual work: Manually scanning each page and validating alt text is not scalable for large systems.
- Risks of non-compliance: Failure to provide accessible content can lead to legal action and damage to brand reputation.
This widespread problem has led many organizations to look for automated tools such as Monsidowhich lightens the burden by performing continuous scans for accessibility issues, including alt text violations.
How Monsido solves Alt-text compliance at scale
Monsido is a web governance platform designed to ensure digital compliance, SEO health and performance optimization. One of the most valued features of SaaS teams is the automated accessibility scanning modulewhich allows entire websites (or web applications) to be assessed for compliance with accessibility standards such as WCAG 2.1, ADA, Section 508and more.
Here’s how Monsido efficiently facilitates alt text solutions:
1. Automatic detection of missing or inadequate alt text
Monsido scans each page and identifies images without alt text or with non-descriptive phrases such as ‘image.jpg’ or ‘graphic’. Using AI and contextual analysis, it distinguishes between decorative and informational images, reducing false positives that would otherwise waste developers’ time.
2. Centralized issue dashboard
All detected issues are displayed in a centralized dashboard with clear categorization: missing alt text, duplicate alt text, or text that does not clearly describe the image feature. Teams can export these findings, assign them to developers, or integrate them into issue tracking systems like Jira for remediation.
3. Best practice recommendations
In addition to identifying what’s wrong, Monsido also offers guidelines for writing better alt text. This includes examples of descriptive sentences and understanding how screen readers interpret them. These educational components are especially useful for non-technical team members or designers who are unfamiliar with accessibility standards.
4. Continuous monitoring and alerts
Once the issues are resolved, Monsido will continue to scan the website regularly. If new updates introduce alt text issues, the system will immediately alert the relevant teams. This ensures that compliance is not just a one-time audit, but an ongoing obligation.
Case study: A mid-sized SaaS vendor learns the value of automation
A mid-sized SaaS company offering project management tools faced increasing pressure to meet accessibility standards after a public sector customer raised concerns. Their platform hosted over 6,000 unique images, most of which were embedded in dashboards and reports. Manual reviews had failed to catch many of the missing alt tags, and their reputation among business customers was at stake.
After launching at Monsido, the company ran its first scan and discovered more than 1,200 images without proper alt text. Within three weeks, they had addressed 90% of the highlighted items using Monsido’s suggestions. The system’s prioritization feature allowed them to fix the most impactful issues first, such as unlabeled navigation icons and key diagrams used in customer reporting tools.
This proactive approach significantly strengthened their pitches to accessibility-conscious organizations, increasing user satisfaction scores by more than 35% and helping to avoid potential lawsuits.
Measured benefits: more than legal compliance
Automating alt text checks gave SaaS teams more than peace of mind. Here’s what they won:
- Time saving: Developers and QA teams reported a 70% reduction in time spent on manual content checks.
- Improved accessibility scores: Independent user testing showed dramatic improvements in the usability of screen readers on web pages.
- Including branding: The company could now publicly commit to accessibility as a value, allowing marketing to focus on new sectors such as education and government.
- Improved SEO performance: Good image tagging led to better indexing of pages by search engines, increasing organic traffic.
Integrating alt text checks into continuous development
By integrating Monsido into their development workflow, SaaS teams can view accessibility as a fundamental part of product design and not an afterthought. Best practices include:
- Run Monsido scans after deployment and during staging.
- Add accessibility checklists to pull request templates.
- Train all departments (not just developers) on what good alt text is.
- Designate accessibility contacts in QA and content teams.
The more integrated the platform becomes, the more seamless the accessibility enforcement. Over time, adhering to alt text becomes second nature for content creators and developers alike.
Final Thoughts: Automation enables accountability at scale
Digital inclusivity isn’t just a trend, it’s a fundamental expectation for companies that serve customers online. For SaaS providers who manage complex, image-heavy products, tools like Monsido make it possible to meet that expectation without overloading teams.
By automating the detection and resolution of alt text issues, organizations can increase their accessibility scores, reduce legal risks, and reach a broader audience. For SaaS teams focused on continuous improvement, platforms like Monsido provide the leverage needed to make accessibility a sustainable, team-wide responsibility.
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