Decorative Image

An image that serves a purely aesthetic or visual design purpose and does not convey meaningful information to the user. According to WCAG guidelines, decorative images should receive empty alt text (alt="") so that screen readers skip over them rather than announcing meaningless descriptions. However, research suggests that the distinction between decorative and informative images is not always straightforward — screen reader users have noted that some images traditionally classified as decorative may still carry contextual meaning, while some informative images add no value to the surrounding content and would be better treated as decorative.