Reviewed October 28, 2026

Alt Text Audits for Product Galleries: A Practical Pass

Ask a store to describe its product images to a blind shopper and the honest answer is often file names and silence. Gallery images get uploaded fast, alt text fields stay empty or repeat the product name, and variant photos that show crucial differences, color, scale, what is included, carry no description at all. An alt text audit sounds like a huge project, but a prioritized pass over your best sellers and gallery patterns fixes most of the real harm quickly. This guide gives the order of work and the writing standard to apply.

Start where alt text decides a purchase

Audit in revenue order: your top products first, then category pages shoppers compare on. For each gallery, ask what a sighted shopper learns from the images that a screen reader user currently does not. Angle views, scale shots with hands or common objects, detail close ups, what is in the box photos, and color variants are decision images; each needs a description of what it shows that the title does not already say. Purely decorative images, brand banners and texture backgrounds, are the opposite case: they should have empty alt text so screen readers skip them instead of announcing noise.

Related reading

If this topic is useful, these earlier guides go deeper on connected questions: Keyboard Traps: How to Audit Your Site for Focus That Cannot Escape, Accessible Email Marketing: What Stores Get Wrong in Campaigns, and Color Contrast Failures: The Store Pages That Fail Most Often.

Write descriptions that add information, not repetition

Good alt text for a gallery image names the view and the useful detail: left side view showing the zip pocket, or shown in navy, folded, next to the open case. Bad alt text repeats the product name on every image, stuffs keywords, or says image of. Keep each description under roughly two short sentences and put the distinguishing fact first, because screen reader users often scan several images quickly to find the one they need. Color variant images must name the color in text even when the swatch seems obvious, and lifestyle images should say what context they add, such as worn with a coat, or shown on a kitchen counter for scale.

Fix the system, not just the current photos

One audit pass decays unless the upload habit changes. Add alt text to your product creation checklist, with the gallery standard written down: every decision image described, every decorative image marked decorative. Some platforms generate alt text automatically or via apps; review that output, because generated descriptions often miss the distinguishing detail and sometimes invent facts. Check theme behavior too: some themes display alt text as captions or reuse it in places that expose sloppy text to everyone. Finally, confirm that zoom and lightbox views keep the same descriptions, since audits often fix the main gallery and miss the enlarged view shoppers actually rely on.

Verify with a screen reader and a keyboard

Close the audit by listening to your top product page with a screen reader, tabbing through the gallery as a shopper would. You should hear a sequence that lets you picture the product and its options without seeing it, in a sensible order, with no filename gibberish and no five repeats of the product name. Check that changing a color variant updates both the image and its description. Note the audit date and coverage, such as top fifty products done, and schedule the long tail in batches. An honest, prioritized audit that ships beats a perfect one that stays planned.

Frequently asked questions

What should alt text say for a color variant image?

Name the color and anything else that changes in that variant, in plain terms: shown in forest green, with the brass zip. Screen reader users cannot see the swatch change, and the variant selector label alone may not confirm which photo they are hearing. If the variant also changes a feature, such as a different strap or lid, say so. Keep it factual and short. Avoid repeating the full product name in every variant description, since the shopper already knows which product page they are on.

Which images should have empty alt text?

Images that add no information: decorative banners, background textures, spacer graphics, and purely ornamental lifestyle shots that duplicate what neighboring images already show. Empty alt text, written as alt with nothing in it, tells screen readers to skip the image entirely, which is a feature, not a gap. The mistake is leaving the attribute off altogether, because then some screen readers read the file name aloud. During the audit, mark decorative images deliberately rather than leaving them ambiguous.

Can I rely on automatically generated alt text?

Use it as a draft, not a decision. Generators are decent at naming obvious objects but weak at the detail that matters in a gallery: which angle, which color, what is included, and how big it is. They also occasionally describe things that are not in the image. For top products, review and correct generated text by hand. For a large back catalog, generated text reviewed in priority batches is still far better than empty fields, as long as someone checks the high traffic pages properly.

How long should product image alt text be?

Aim for one or two short sentences, roughly under 150 characters for simple images, longer only when the image carries complex information like a size or comparison chart, which ideally should also exist as real text on the page. Screen reader users can pause and replay, but long descriptions on every gallery image make comparing a product exhausting. Put the distinguishing detail first so the description stays useful even if the shopper moves on quickly.