Alt Text Workflows for Agency Teams Building Shopify Themes

Alt text is the most common automated accessibility failure on Shopify builds, and the easiest to prevent. Here is the workflow agencies use to keep it from regressing.

Every accessibility scan of a Shopify storefront finds the same thing at the top of the report: images with missing or useless alt text. It is the most common automated finding in ecommerce, and also the most preventable. The reason it keeps showing up is not technical. It is organizational. Nobody owns alt text, so nobody writes it, and the one accessibility task a junior could do in an afternoon becomes a 400-item backlog six months after launch. Agencies that get this right treat alt text as a workflow problem with a workflow answer.

Decide who writes it before the build starts

The failure mode is always the same: the developer assumes the content team will add alt text, the content team assumes the developer handled it in the theme, and the client assumes it was included in the price. Put the decision in the project plan. For theme-level imagery, icons, logos, decorative banners, the developer owns it, because only the developer touches that code. For product and collection imagery, the merchandising or content team owns it, because only they know what the product is. Write both assignments into the statement of work. When ownership is explicit, alt text gets written during the build, when it costs minutes. When it is implicit, it gets "added later," which means never.

Three rules that cover almost every theme image

Teams freeze because alt text feels subjective. It is not. Three rules cover nearly everything in a Shopify theme. First, describe the image's function, not its appearance: "Women's waterproof hiking boot in brown" beats "image of a boot." Second, decorative images get empty alt text, alt="", so screen readers skip them; a missing alt attribute is not the same as an empty one, and scanners flag the difference. Third, images that act as links or buttons describe the action, not the picture: "View the lookbook" for a linked banner, not "smiling model in summer dress." Teach these three rules in a single onboarding session and the team will write acceptable alt text without a style guide the size of a novel.

Bake the requirement into the theme itself

Workflows beat reminders. In the theme's section schemas, make alt text a required setting wherever a merchant uploads an image, with helper text that shows an example. For hardcoded theme imagery, add a CI check that fails the build when an img tag lacks an alt attribute; the five minutes it takes to write the check pays for itself the first time it catches a regression. Keep a shared snippet library for repeated patterns, social icons, payment badges, trust seals, so every project uses the same correct markup instead of reinventing it. The goal is to make writing alt text the path of least resistance and skipping it the thing that requires effort.

The handoff that keeps it fixed after launch

Most alt text regressions happen after the agency leaves. The client's content team uploads new product images, the alt field sits empty, and the scan report slowly fills up again. Prevent it in the handoff. Record a two-minute screen capture showing where alt text lives in the Shopify admin. Add one page to the handoff document with the three rules and three good examples from the client's own catalog. Then put the store on a monitoring schedule that flags new images missing alt text, so the first regression triggers a friendly note, not a quarterly surprise. Agencies that do this turn a one-time fix into a reason for the client to keep the retainer.

Frequently asked questions

Is empty alt text ever the right choice?

Yes, for purely decorative images. A background texture or a decorative divider adds no information, so alt="" tells screen readers to skip it. The key distinction is between an empty alt attribute, which is a deliberate decision, and a missing alt attribute, which scanners flag as an error. When in doubt, ask whether the image communicates something a shopper needs. If not, empty alt is correct.

Who should write alt text for product images?

The people who know the products, usually the merchandising or content team, not the developers. Good product alt text reads like a concise product description: what it is, the key variant, the color. Developers should own theme-level imagery like icons and logos, and should build the fields and checks that make it easy for the content team to do their part.

Can AI tools write alt text for a whole catalog?

They can draft it, but they cannot decide what matters. Automated descriptions tend to be literal, like a red dress on a hanger, and miss the selling details a merchant would include. A workable approach is AI first draft plus human review for top products, with templates for the long tail. Whatever the mix, spot-check the output: plausible-sounding wrong descriptions are worse than none.

How do we audit alt text across a client portfolio?

Run the same automated scan on every client store and track one metric: the share of content images missing alt text. Trend it monthly per client. A sudden jump usually means a new product upload workflow skipped the alt field, which is a training issue, not a code issue. Report the trend in the retainer review and the conversation justifies itself.