Accessibility: Preparing Your Images and Galleries
6 min read
Visitors who have visual impairments may use assistive technology such as screen readers to browse your site. Add descriptions to your images and galleries using alt text to make them accessible to these visitors.
Alt text provides information about your media and helps search engines and screen readers "read" them.
In this article, learn more about:
Adding alt text
Alt text ensures that visitors using screen readers can access and understand the content on your site, so we recommend adding it to all relevant images, including media appearing in apps such as Wix Stores, Wix Bookings, etc.
To single images
Add alt text to images in your site builder (Wix Editor and Studio Editor) from the Settings panel. If you're building a site with the Wix Editor, you can also use the Accessibility Wizard to add alternative text to site and app images.
Acc. Wizard
Studio Editor
Wix Editor
Use the Wizard to add alt text site images and images that appear in your Wix Stores and Bookings apps.
To add alt text to site images:
- Go to your editor.
- Click Settings at the top of the editor.
- Click Accessibility Wizard.
- Click Scan My Site.
- Select cards titled Alt text.
- Enter the image description into the What's in the image? field.
- Click Set Alt Text.
To add alt text to app images:
- Go to your editor.
- Click Settings at the top of the editor.
- Click Accessibility Wizard.
- Click Scan My Site.
- Select the Stores / Bookings drop-down.
- Select cards titled Alt text.
- (For stores only) Select each product image / product variant image.
- Enter the image description into the What's in the image? field.
- Click Set Alt Text.
- Click Done.
To galleries
Use your site's Media Manager to add alternative text to gallery images.
Studio Editor
Wix Editor
- Click the relevant gallery.
- Click Manage Media.
- Select the relevant image.
- Enter a title for the image in the field.
- Edit the alt text for your image under Alt Text if you want it to be different from your image's title.
- Click Done.
Tip:
Make sure to publish the site so the alt text is live.
Note:
It is not currently possible to add alt text to images / galleries in bulk. If you would like to see this feature, you can vote for it here.
Marking images as decorative
Decorative images are images that do not contribute to the content of your site, as they are there for aesthetic or decorative purposes only.
If an image on your site is decorative and is not relevant to the context of your site, it is not necessary to add alt text. You can mark an image as 'decorative' in the Accessibility Wizard to ensure that search engines and screen readers will automatically skip it.
To mark an image as decorative:
- Go to your editor.
- Click Settings at the top of the editor.
- Click Accessibility Wizard.
- Click Scan My Site.
- Click the card titled Alternative Text for the relevant image.
- Select the checkbox next to This image is decorative, it doesn't need a description.
Note:
You can only mark images as decorative if they don't already have alt text. To mark an image with alt text as decorative, remove the alt text from within the Editor, then rescan your site with the Wizard.
Text in images
This refers to images that contain pictured or added text.
Text in images cannot be "read" by search engines or screen readers. However, if the image is necessary, and the text has context to the site, you can add it to the image description.
If the text does not have context or doesn't contribute to the content of the site, you do not need to add it to the image description.
Select an option below to learn more about image text you should and shouldn't add to the image description.
Important text
Non-important text
Images of text
Images of text contain only text, and no other pictured elements. Some examples of this include pictures of fonts, or logos that contain text only.
As they are not "real" text elements, images of text cannot be read by search engines or screenreaders. We recommend avoiding them where possible, and replacing them with real text elements to improve SEO and accessibility on your site.
Next step:
Go back to the Accessibility Checklist to continue improving your site for accessibility.
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