In plain English
The AA rule (1.4.5) says avoid pictures of text but gives you some slack. This AAA rule removes almost all the slack: use real text everywhere except true logos and cases where the shopper can customise the display. Baked-in text on banners, buttons, and promo tiles should be live HTML text instead.
Real text scales, reflows, stays sharp on any screen, is readable by screen readers, and can be translated. An image of text is none of those things.
Who this is for
- Screen-reader users, who cannot read text trapped inside an image without alt.
- Low-vision users who zoom, since real text stays crisp and image text blurs.
- Shoppers who translate your page, which only works on real text.
How to check and fix it yourself
Look at banners, hero graphics, sale badges, and category tiles. Any text there should be HTML text layered over the image, not part of the picture. Logos are the main allowed exception.
Promo banner: "20% OFF" baked into the JPG. ✗ rebuild as HTML text over the image
Hero heading rendered as real <h1> text. ✓
Store logo (a wordmark image). ✓ allowed exceptionWhere we can help
We flag every place your store ships text as an image, then note which are genuine logo exceptions and which should become real text. It overlaps with the common failures that also hurt your SEO, since search engines can’t read image text either.