Alt Text

What is alt text?

Alt text (alternative text) is the description you provide in the alt attribute of an <img> tag, for example <img src="boot.jpg" alt="Brown leather boot seen from the side">. Screen readers read the text aloud to users with visual impairments, and it appears as a fallback if the image fails to load. At the same time, Google uses the alt text as a signal about what the image depicts.

Why does alt text matter?

For an online store, alt text solves two things at once: accessibility and SEO. Descriptive alt text makes product images understandable for customers navigating with a screen reader, and good image accessibility is a requirement under the European Accessibility Act for many stores. It also helps Google understand and index your images, which can bring extra traffic from Google Images. Purely decorative images should use an empty alt attribute (alt="") so screen readers skip them instead of announcing a filename.

Common use cases

• Product images: Describe the product specifically (“red wool sweater with a roll neck”) rather than just “sweater” or the product SKU.
• Decorative images: Use alt="" for backgrounds and ornaments so assistive technology ignores them.
• Images used as links or buttons: The alt text acts as the link text and should describe where the link leads.
• Infographics and text in images: Reproduce the important text so the point is not lost for screen readers and Google.

Shopify perspective

In Shopify, you edit alt text under each product’s media (click the image and choose “Edit alt text”), and the theme usually renders it with {{ image.alt }} in Liquid. Shopify does not automatically fill in meaningful alt text; many themes fall back to the product title, which is rarely an accurate description. Keep the text concise (ideally under ~125 characters), describe the image naturally, and avoid stuffing in keywords. Consider saving images as WebP for speed — the alt text carries over regardless of file format.