Alt text on Shopify: how to write it, where to add it, and how to find what is missing

Alt text is the short description a screen reader reads out instead of an image. For a blind customer, a product photo without alt text is a product without a picture — or worse, a file name read aloud.

Where to add it in Shopify

• Product images: open the product, click the image, and fill in the alt text field.
• Images in theme sections (banners, slideshows): the image picker in the theme editor has its own alt text field.
• Images in pages and blog posts: select the image in the editor and edit its alt text.

What good alt text says

What a sighted shopper would notice: “Red merino scarf, folded, with fringe at both ends” — not “scarf”, not “image”, not the product title repeated, and not a list of keywords. Decorative images that carry no information can have empty alt text so the screen reader skips them.

How to find images with none

The Shopify admin has no filter for “images without alt text”. An automated accessibility check finds them on the pages it visits and tells you which template they come from — often one section or one app is responsible for most of them.

Barrier Watch reports missing image descriptions in its weekly check and records the date each one was fixed. See a finding.