Success Criteria

WCAG 1.4.5 Images of Text

Success Criterion 1.4.5 requires that information conveyed via an image of text is instead conveyed with real text, except where a specific visual presentation is essential (like a logo) or the image is genuinely customizable to match the same requirement. It's a Level AA criterion under Guideline 1.4 (Distinguishable).

Why images of text cause problems

An image containing text — a banner graphic with a headline baked into the image file, a screenshot of a paragraph — can't be resized, recolored, or have its font changed by the user or the browser the way real text can. Someone who needs larger text, different contrast, or a different font for readability gets none of that flexibility from an image; the "text" is frozen exactly as designed, no matter what the viewer actually needs. It also can't be selected, copied, translated by browser tools, or reliably read by a screen reader without a separate alt-text description doing all the work.

The exceptions

Logotypes — a brand's actual logo, where the specific visual rendering of the text genuinely is the content (a wordmark), are exempt.

Essential presentation — rare cases where the specific visual appearance is essential to the information itself and can't be achieved with styled real text (a screenshot demonstrating a bug in a specific font rendering, for instance).

User-customizable images — an image-generation system that lets the user control the actual font, size, and colors before the image of text is produced still satisfies the criterion, since the flexibility this criterion cares about exists at the point of customization.

Why this rarely comes up in modern web development

CSS's font, color, and sizing capabilities have made "baking text into an image" mostly unnecessary for a long time now — this criterion mostly catches legacy patterns (old marketing banners exported from design tools as flat images, PDF-to-image conversions) rather than anything a modern component library would produce by default. When it does show up, the fix is almost always straightforward: recreate the same visual design with real HTML text and CSS instead of a static image export.

Common questions

What is WCAG 1.4.5?

A Level AA criterion: don't use images of text to convey information when real, styled text could achieve the same visual result.

Why avoid images of text?

They don't scale or reflow cleanly, can't be restyled by users who need larger or higher-contrast text, and aren't reliably read by assistive technology.

What is exempt from 1.4.5?

Logotypes (text that is part of a logo or brand) and cases where a particular presentation of the text is essential, such as a specific font sample.