Text information

Silktide asks you to confirm that information on your pages is conveyed with real text rather than pictures of words. Real text can be resized, restyled, translated, and read aloud; words baked into an image cannot.

Why this matters

Readers adapt text to their needs: enlarging it, changing its colors and fonts, having it read aloud by a screen reader, or machine-translating it. An image of words defeats all of that - it blurs when magnified and ignores every user setting. It also hurts search engines, which index text far better than pictures of text. This is a WCAG level AA requirement (success criterion 1.4.5), part of the standard most laws reference.

How to fix it

This check is a prompt to review each page:

1. Look for images containing words that carry information: banners, buttons, headings, and promotional graphics exported from design tools.
2. Rebuild them as real text styled with CSS:

<!-- Information trapped inside an image -->
<img src="/images/sale-50-off.png" alt="Sale: 50% off!">

<!-- Fixed: real text, styled to match the design -->
<div class="promo">Sale: 50% off!</div>

3. Images of text are acceptable when the presentation is essential (a logo or wordmark) or when the reader can customize the rendering to their needs.
4. Once you are satisfied the page is fine, approve the finding.

How Silktide tests this

1. Every page is flagged for manual review. Reliably telling whether an image contains words, and whether those words carry information, requires human judgment.

Troubleshooting

How this differs from the similar AAA check

This check covers the level AA criterion (1.4.5), which permits images of text that are customizable or essential. Images of text covers the stricter level AAA criterion (1.4.9), which permits them only for decoration or where essential. Meet this one first.

Learn more

• Understanding Success Criterion 1.4.5: Images of Text (WCAG 2.1)
• Images of text