WCAG 1.1.1 (A)
One or more images have no alt attribute
What this failure is
Every <img> tag in your HTML should carry an alt attribute. The attribute holds a short text description of what the image shows. Screen readers read that description aloud. If the attribute is missing entirely, most screen readers fall back to reading the image filename, which is usually something like "IMG_20240517_143022.jpg" or "DSC-1204-final-v3.png". That tells the listener nothing useful and, on a product page, means the shopper cannot tell what they are about to buy. Decorative images that add no information should carry an empty alt (alt="") — that is not the same as missing; empty alt tells the screen reader to skip the image, which is what you want.
Reference: WCAG 1.1.1 (A) — the authoritative spec.
Who it affects
- Blind screen reader users: NVDA, JAWS and VoiceOver read the image filename character by character when alt is missing, so "hero-banner-final-v2.jpg" becomes "h e r o hyphen banner hyphen final hyphen v two dot j p g".
- Low-vision users using image-description features: Windows Narrator and iOS VoiceOver can offer AI-generated descriptions as a fallback, but only when they see a missing alt; the descriptions are often wrong for product photos (a running shoe described as "a black object").
- Users on slow or metered connections: When images fail to load the alt text is what shows in their place; with no alt, the layout shows a broken-image icon and users cannot infer what was meant to be there.
- Shoppers using product-image search: Google Image search relies heavily on alt text to rank product photos; missing alt costs organic traffic.
How to fix it
Concrete steps for the four platforms most small e-commerce sites run on. If you use a different stack, the underlying HTML change is the same.
Shopify
From your Shopify admin, go to Products, click the name of the product, then click a product media item to open the Preview media page. Click Add alt text, type a short description of what the image shows, and click Save alt text (the maximum is 512 characters, but Shopify recommends 125 or fewer). For images inside rich-text descriptions, click the image in the editor and fill in the Image alt text field. For catalogues with many products you can bulk-upload alt text via a CSV — see the Shopify Help Center article on adding alt text.
WooCommerce
WordPress stores alt text on the image itself, not on the product. Go to Media > Library, click any image, and fill in the Alternative Text field in the Attachment Details dialog on the right; WooCommerce then uses that alt text everywhere the image appears. For a product's featured image and gallery, edit the product, click the featured image, and set alt in the media modal that opens. Third-party plugins can auto-populate alt from the product name for large catalogues, but review the output — a name like "SKU-A47B" makes for bad alt text.
Wix
In the Wix Editor, click the image, click the Settings icon, and write a short description in the What's in the image? field, then press Enter to save. For a Wix Pro Gallery, add the alt text per-image through the Media Manager. The Accessibility Wizard (Settings > Accessibility Wizard in the dashboard) can generate AI alt-text suggestions for every image on a page or for specific images; SVG and GIF files are not supported by the AI tool and need alt text written by hand.
Squarespace
For an Image Block, click the image, open the Content tab in the sidebar, scroll to Image alt text, and type a description (up to 250 characters). For a Gallery Section, the image's description doubles as its alt text — set the description per image. For product images, hover the product image, click the three-dot menu, choose Edit metadata, and fill in the Alt text field (up to 200 characters). There is no built-in site-wide alt-audit report — you have to check each block, or run an external scan.
Notes
Good alt text describes the image's purpose, not its appearance. "Red silk scarf tied around a wooden hanger" is better than "scarf image" and much better than "IMG_4471.jpg". Decorative images (background flourishes, dividers, purely stylistic photography) should use alt="" so screen readers skip them silently — never write "decorative image" as alt text.
Check your own site
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