Text on Images and the Canva Accessibility Trap

You designed a sharp event announcement in Canva. The colors are right, the text is clean, and it looks great on Instagram. So you saved it as a PNG and dropped it on your website's events page. Makes sense. Why redo the work?

Here's the thing: all that text you placed on the graphic? As far as your website is concerned, it doesn't exist. Screen readers skip right past it. Google can't read it. Translation tools can't touch it. It's a picture of words, not actual words. And that gap between what you see and what your website sees is where text on images accessibility breaks down.

This is Part 4 of our ADA series. We've covered the compliance landscape, the common fixes, and the SEO connection. Now we're looking at one specific workflow that trips up more organizations than almost anything else.

The Tool Isn't the Problem. The Workflow Is.

I want to be clear about something: Canva is a genuinely useful tool. It's free for nonprofits, and over 700,000 nonprofits use it. Nearly half of all small businesses use it. For quick social media graphics, it does exactly what it should. It's fast, it's accessible, and it gets the information out the door.

I love these tools. And I also see the problems they cause when they're used in the wrong context.

The issue isn't Canva itself. It's what happens next. You export a graphic as a PNG or JPG and upload it to your website as the primary way of communicating information. That event name, that date and location, that call to action: it all lives inside an image file now. And when Canva graphics land on your website that way, accessibility breaks.

Social media platforms are built around images. Websites are built around text. When you move a graphic from one context to the other, the rules change, and most people don't know that until someone points it out.

What Your Website Actually Sees

When text is baked into an image file, four things break at once.

Screen Readers Can't Read It

Screen readers parse HTML. They can't extract text from inside a PNG or JPG. A screen reader user will hear only whatever alt text you've provided, if you've provided any. A lot of Canva exports land on websites with the default filename ("Untitled design.png") and no alt text at all. That's a failure of WCAG 1.1.1 (Non-text Content), which is the most basic accessibility requirement there is.

Search Engines Can't Reliably Index It

Google's Gary Illyes has confirmed that Google's crawler doesn't reliably understand text embedded in images. Every keyword in that image text, including your event name, your program title, and your organization's mission, is invisible to search engines. If the information only exists inside a graphic, Google doesn't see it. We covered the accessibility-SEO connection in depth in Part 3, and this is one of the clearest examples of how image text and ADA compliance intersect with search visibility.

Translation Tools Can't Translate It

Browser-based translation tools like Google Translate work on HTML text. Text inside images stays in the original language, period. If your organization serves multilingual communities, this matters more than you might think.

Users Can't Resize It

People who need larger text can't resize what's baked into an image without it getting blurry. Real HTML text scales cleanly. Image text pixelates. That's a WCAG 1.4.4 issue (Resize Text), and it directly affects people who rely on magnification to use the web.

There's a specific accessibility guideline for this (WCAG 1.4.5, Images of Text), and it says something pretty straightforward: if you can use real text, use real text.

When Image Text Is Actually Fine

It's not all-or-nothing. There are situations where text in images is perfectly acceptable.

• Logos. Text that's part of a logo is fine. The visual presentation is the content. WCAG recognizes this as essential. Just make sure the logo has alt text that describes it.
• Decorative graphics where the text also exists as real HTML text on the page. If your event details are written out as text and the Canva graphic is there for visual interest, that's fine. The image supports the text; it doesn't replace it.
• Infographics with proper alternatives. An infographic works when you provide a text-based alternative alongside it, such as a data table, an expandable text section, or a linked text version. The key is that the information is available to everyone, not just people who can see the image.

The guiding principle is simple: text on your website should be real text, and the graphics should support that.

What to Do Instead

Lead with Real Text

The simplest fix is the best one. Write the information as actual HTML text on your website. Use the Canva graphic as a visual accent, not the container for your message.

Your event name, date, location, and description should all be real text on the page. The graphic can sit beside it or above it. But the text does the communicating, and the image makes it look good. That's how you build accessible website images.

If You Must Use Text-in-Images, Write Real Alt Text

Sometimes you're working with a graphic you can't redesign, like an event flyer from a partner organization or a shared announcement you didn't create. In those cases, write alt text that includes the full text content of the image. Not "event flyer" but "Spring Gala, March 15, 2026, 6 PM, Town Hall. Tickets at springgala.org." We walked through alt text best practices in Part 2 of this series.

If you're on WordPress and thinking "I have no idea which of my images are missing alt text," we built a free plugin for exactly that. Alt Tag Manager surfaces every image on your site that's missing alt text and lets you update each one right there. No digging through the media library. Free, zero cost.

For the Big Moments, Bring in a Designer

Quick social media graphics? Canva is fine for that. But a major campaign landing page, a fundraising push, a program launch? That's when a professional designer builds text directly into your website as real, styled HTML, so you get the visual impact and the accessibility. When it's a big deal, that's when you want to bring in someone who can make it stand out.

The SEO Bonus You Get for Free

Here's what's encouraging about all of this: the same fix that makes your site accessible also makes it more visible to search engines. Real HTML text gets indexed. Image text doesn't. Proper alt text serves both screen readers and Google. You're not doing two separate projects here. It's the same project with two benefits.

If your event name only exists inside a Canva graphic, Google doesn't know about it. Put that same information as real text on the page, and now it's searchable, indexable, and working for your nonprofit SEO strategy.

Wrapping Up the Series

This post wraps our four-part ADA series. We started with the big picture of ADA compliance, walked through the fixes most organizations can make right now, connected accessibility to search visibility, and now we've looked at one specific workflow that catches a lot of people off guard.

The thread through all four posts is this: accessibility isn't a separate project. It's part of building a website that works well for everyone: your visitors, your search rankings, and your organization's mission.

If you want a quick starting point, the Alt Tag Manager plugin is free and takes about two minutes to install. It's a good first step.

And if the "I love this tool and I see the problems" thread resonated with you, we have more to say about that relationship with AI tools.