Free Shopify Alt Text Checker
Find out how many of your product images have no alt text. Enter your store address and in under a minute see what share of your catalogue's photos a blind shopper cannot tell apart, and which products are worst. No install, no sign-up and no email address.
Alt text is the short description a screen reader reads aloud instead of an image. When a product image has none, most Shopify themes read out the product title instead, so a shopper using a screen reader hears "Linen Shirt, Linen Shirt, Linen Shirt" for every photo in the gallery and learns nothing about colour, fit or detail.
Works with any public Shopify store, including yourstore.myshopify.com. Password-protected stores cannot be read from outside.
How it works
It reads your store's public product list to count your published products and their images, then reads the alt text of up to 40 products picked evenly from across your catalogue. If you have 40 products or fewer it reads every one and the result is an exact count; otherwise the total is an estimate from the sample, and it says so.
| What it reports | What it means |
|---|---|
| No alt text | The image has no description of its own (WCAG 1.1.1, level A). Your theme probably reads the product title instead, which says nothing about this particular photo. |
| File name as alt text | The description is a file name such as "IMG_4031.jpg", which a screen reader reads aloud exactly like that. |
| Worst products | The sampled products with the most undescribed images, so you know where to start. |
What this check cannot see
It reads the alt text saved on your product images in Shopify. It does not judge whether a description is good, only whether there is one, and it does not look at images in your theme, collections, blog posts or pages. Some themes take image descriptions from somewhere else, such as a metafield; if yours does, this check will not see them. For the rest of your storefront, use the free Shopify accessibility checker.
Describe your product images without writing them one by one
Remedy is our Shopify app. It writes descriptions for product images that have none, across your catalogue. It also scans your storefront in a real browser with axe-core, the engine auditors use, fixes what can be fixed, and keeps a dated record of what was found, fixed and still open. The Audit plan is free.
See Remedy on the Shopify App StoreMore free tools: all our free Shopify store checkers.
Questions
- Is this checker free?
- Yes. There is no sign-up and nothing to install. Results are not stored anywhere.
- Where do I add alt text in Shopify?
- In your Shopify admin, open a product, click an image in the Media section, and click "Add alt text". Describe what the photo shows that the title does not: the colour, the angle, the detail, the person wearing it.
- What makes good alt text for a product photo?
- Say what a sighted shopper would notice, in a sentence or less: "Navy linen shirt, back view, showing the box pleat". Skip "image of" and the store name. Each photo in a gallery should say something the others do not.
- Will it change anything in my store?
- No. It only reads the public product information any visitor or search engine can see.
- Why does it say my store does not publish its product list?
- Shopify stores publish a public product list by default, but stores with a custom (headless) front end, or some apps, turn it off. Then the images cannot be checked from outside; the Remedy app reads them from inside your store instead.
- What else should I check?
- Colour contrast is the other problem most stores have. The free Shopify color contrast checker grades every colour scheme in your theme in a few seconds.
- Does alt text help with search?
- It can help your images appear in image search, because it tells search engines what the photo shows. Write it for shoppers first, though: a description stuffed with keywords is no help to someone listening to it.