A fact that lives only in a screenshot doesn't exist

Here's a pattern we find in almost every help center we look at.

An article explains how to turn on two-factor authentication. There's a nice screenshot of the security settings page, with the toggle circled. Underneath it says "switch it on and you're done".

Nowhere in the words does it say the setting lives under Advanced, three clicks in, behind a section that's collapsed by default. That fact is only in the picture.

To a machine, that fact doesn't exist

A retrieval system reads text. Your screenshot is a file with a name like 2fa-settings-new.png. Whatever is inside it — the menu path, the button label, the warning in red — is invisible.

So when a customer asks where the setting is, the system has an article about two-factor authentication that never answers the question, and it will do its best with that. Usually by guessing a plausible-sounding path.

The same is true for a screen reader, and for anyone on a slow connection where the image hasn't loaded. This isn't a new problem. It's an old accessibility problem that has just acquired a second, louder constituency.

Screenshots hide things in a specific way

It's not that visuals are bad. It's that writing gets lazy around them. Once there's a picture showing the thing, the sentence explaining the thing feels redundant, so it doesn't get written.

The test is simple: delete the image in your head and re-read the section. If it no longer answers the question, the article was relying on the picture to carry a fact.

Two habits that fix it

Write the path in words, every time. "Settings, then Security, then expand Advanced." It feels redundant next to the screenshot. It is the only version of that fact anything can read.

Write alt text that says what the picture proves, not what it is. "Screenshot of settings page" is worthless to everybody. "The Advanced section expanded, showing the two-factor toggle set to off" is a sentence that does real work.

And take fewer of them

Every screenshot is a maintenance bill you agreed to pay forever. The product ships a new nav and forty images quietly become wrong — still confident, still circled, still pointing at a menu that moved.

The question worth asking before adding one is not "would a picture help here?" but "is this worth re-shooting every time the UI changes?". Often the honest answer is no, and a clearly written path is better on every axis.

Cover the image with your hand and read the section again. If the words no longer answer the question, the picture was holding something up, and it is holding it somewhere nothing can read.