The Description Deficit: Auditing Alt Text on UK Retail Product Pages

Product images do a great deal of selling. They show the cut of a jacket, the fall of a hem, the difference between two shades of navy. For blind and low-vision shoppers using a screen reader, that visual salesmanship has to be translated into words. Too often, it is not. In a small review of product pages from a spread of UK retailers, the same four patterns recur: descriptions that help, images that should have been left silent, text that reads like a search engine's shopping list, and alt attributes that are simply absent.

That is not a niche concern. Retail is a sector where the image is frequently the product information. A customer cannot judge a fabric from a product title alone, and a screen reader user should not have to choose between a paragraph of marketing copy and a filename.

Why product-image alt text matters more than teams assume

Alt text is read aloud by screen readers and surfaced on braille displays. It also appears when an image fails to load, and it is used by some speech-recognition tools. On a product page, the alternative text is not a caption and not a place for search keywords. It is the equivalent of a knowledgeable shop assistant saying what is visible: the colour, the pattern, the shape, the detail that distinguishes this item from the one beside it.

For low-vision shoppers who magnify a page, poor alt text compounds the difficulty. If a thumbnail is enlarged but the accompanying description is vague, the visual information remains out of reach. For blind shoppers, the description may be the only product detail available before purchase. Getting it wrong does not merely inconvenience; it removes a basis for informed choice.

The four buckets an audit will find

A useful audit sorts every product image into one of four groups. The categories are deliberately plain, because the point is to give content teams a shared vocabulary rather than another compliance document.

Useful. The description names the product and the attributes a shopper would notice: “Navy wool-blend coat with a double-breasted front and calf length.” It is specific, it reflects what is in the image, and it does not repeat the visible product title word for word.

Decorative. Some images add atmosphere rather than information: a lifestyle background, a swatch texture used purely as a divider, a model's shadow. These should have an empty alt attribute, alt="", so that screen readers skip them. Leaving them undescribed is correct; leaving them with a filename is not.

Keyword-stuffed. This is the most dispiriting category: “red dress women's clothing buy online cheap UK fashion.” It reads as though it was written for a crawler, not a customer. It is also likely to breach WCAG 1.1.1, because the text alternative does not serve the equivalent purpose of the image. It serves a different purpose entirely.

Missing. No alt attribute at all, or one containing the file name, such as IMG_2043.jpg. For a screen reader user, this is the digital equivalent of a shop window covered in brown paper.

What WCAG 1.1.1 actually asks for

Success Criterion 1.1.1, Non-text Content, requires a text alternative that serves the equivalent purpose. It does not require a description of every pixel. It does require judgement about context. The same photograph might need a detailed description on a product detail page and an empty alt attribute when reused as a decorative banner on the homepage.

The criterion also makes clear that decorative images can be marked as such and ignored by assistive technology. The mistake is not silence; the mistake is silence where information is being conveyed, or noise where it is not. For retailers, the practical test is simple: if the image disappeared, would a shopper lose information they need to make a decision? If yes, describe it. If no, mark it decorative.

WCAG is not law in itself, but it is the benchmark that UK organisations commonly use to demonstrate accessibility. For retailers, the Equality Act 2010 duty to make reasonable adjustments is the wider legal context. Alt text is one of the cheaper adjustments available, which makes its frequent absence harder to defend.

A template that does not turn every image into an essay

Content teams often resist alt text because they fear writing long descriptions for hundreds of products. A short template reduces that burden without reducing quality.

[Product type] in [colour/pattern/material], with [one or two distinguishing visible details].

For example: “Petrol-blue leather shoulder bag with a gold clasp and adjustable strap.” Or: “White cotton shirt with a relaxed fit and a single chest pocket.” The template works because it forces the writer to answer the questions a shopper would ask, not to describe the lighting or the model's pose.

Where a product has multiple images, each should add something. A front view, a back view, a close-up of a zip and a fabric swatch do not all need the same sentence. Repeating the product title across five images wastes the shopper's time and suggests the alt text was generated by a spreadsheet rather than considered.

For decorative images, the instruction is simpler still: leave the alt attribute empty. Do not insert a space, do not add a full stop, and do not let the CMS fall back to the file name.

Making the audit routine stick

The audit itself should be modest and repeatable. Sample a representative set of product pages, perhaps twenty to forty across categories, and record the alt text for each image alongside the four-bucket classification. Note where the text duplicates the product title, where it reads as a keyword list, and where it is missing. Then compare the results with what a screen reader actually announces. Listening to a page is often more revealing than reading the source code.

The findings should feed back into the image workflow, not into a one-off report. Product photographers and content teams can agree a short description at the point of upload. The CMS can require an alt field, but it should also allow an explicit decorative option. Automated suggestions can help with the first draft, but they need review; a machine that describes a model's clothing as “fashion” has not understood the product.

As UK retailers head into another busy trading period in 2026, the commercial case is straightforward. A shopper who cannot understand what is being sold is a shopper who cannot buy it. Alt text is not an editorial flourish. It is the product description that happens to live beside the image, and it deserves the same care as the price.