The EAA and alt texts: what it means for WordPress sites
The European Accessibility Act has been in effect since June 2025. Alt texts on images are no longer optional — and the backlog in existing media libraries is often larger than expected.
Since 28 June 2025, the European Accessibility Act (EAA) is in force across the EU. It requires digital products and services to meet WCAG 2.1 AA — and it affects more WordPress sites than many think.
Who the EAA affects
The Act primarily targets businesses offering digital products and services: online shops, booking portals, banking apps, e-commerce in general.
Micro-enterprises (fewer than 10 employees, under €2M annual turnover) are exempt — but that’s the exception, not the rule for professional WordPress projects.
What’s specifically required for images
Accessibility for images means one thing at its core: every image that conveys information needs an alt text that describes the content for screen readers and other assistive technologies.
That sounds simple. It gets complex quickly when a media library has 3,000 images and maybe 200 of them have an alt text.
The real problem: the backlog
New images can be labelled at upload. But what about everything already in the media library?
This is the real challenge for agencies and website owners. Manually labelling thousands of images is realistically not feasible — at least not with reasonable effort.
Where AI genuinely helps
AI-powered alt text generation isn’t magic, but it solves exactly this problem: it can process large numbers of images quickly with usable alt texts.
Img Performer PRO integrates exactly this — directly in WordPress, with the AI provider of your choice. The result lands automatically in the attachment field, is editable, and provides a solid baseline that you can refine as needed.
Not perfect — but significantly better than nothing, and orders of magnitude faster than manual work.
What this means in practice
- New images — automatically get an AI alt text on every upload
- Existing media library — bulk processing with AI alt texts
- AVIF conversion — smaller files, better performance, overall more accessible user experience
Accessibility is not a project you finish once. But you have to start somewhere — and “automatically on the next upload” is a good starting point.