Accessibility: Preparing Your Images and Galleries
9 min
In this article
- Adding alt text in your editor
- To single images
- To galleries
- Adding alt text in the Accessibility Wizard
- Generating alt text with AI
- Marking images as decorative
- Text in images
- Images of text
Visitors who have visual conditions may use assistive technology such as screen readers to browse your site. Add descriptions to images and galleries using alt text to make them accessible to these visitors.
Alt text provides information about site media, and helps search engines and screen readers "read" them.
Where does Wix get its information?
- We make recommendations as per the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) document, which has been developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
- This article is based on the following success criteria:
Adding alt text in your editor
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.
Wix Editor
Studio Editor
- Go to your editor.
- Click the image on your page.
- Click the Settings icon
. - Enter a description of the image under What's in the image?.
- Press Enter on your keyboard to save.
To galleries
Use your site's Media Manager to add alternative text to gallery images.
Wix Editor
Studio Editor
- Go to your editor.
- Click the gallery on your page.
- Click Manage Media or Change Images.
- Click an image to select it.
- Enter a title for the image on the right.
- (For Wix Pro Gallery) 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.
Adding alt text in the Accessibility Wizard
While checking a site with the Accessibility Wizard, you may be prompted to add alt text to images. You can use the task in the wizard to provide a short, clear description for site visitors.
Wix Editor
Studio 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 and select Accessibility Wizard.
- Click Scan My Site in the Accessibility Wizard panel on the right.
- 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 and select Accessibility Wizard.
- Click Scan My Site in the Accessibility Wizard panel on the right.
- 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.
Generating alt text with AI
Building a site in the Studio Editor? You can use the AI tool in the Accessibility Wizard to generate alt text. Choose whether to generate alt text for specific images, or for every image on the page.
Important:
- We cannot guarantee that AI generated alt text is always completely accurate. We therefore recommend checking the generated text for every image, and editing it as needed.
- SVG or GIF images are not supported by the AI alt text tool. You need to manually write the alt text for these files.
To generate AI alt text:
- Go to your editor.
- Click Site Checker
on the left side of your editor.
- Select Fix Accessibility Issues.
- Click Scan Site.
- Select the Detected issues tab.
- Open the relevant page drop-down.
- (If not all images have alt text) Click Get started.
- (If you have previously added alt text to all of the images) Click Edit.
- Select what you want to do:
- Generate alt text for a single image:
- Click the Edit icon
beside the relevant image.
- Click Generate.
- Click the Edit icon
- Bulk generate alt text for all page images: Click Generate.
- Generate alt text for a single image:
- Check the generated text / make any necessary changes.
- Click Apply.
Using bulk editing?
The tool does not generate alt text for images that are marked as decorative, or that already contain alt text.
Note:
Occasionally, you may see that the AI tool has failed to generate alt text for an image / images on a page. You can click Try Again as needed.
Marking images as decorative
Decorative images are images that do not contribute to the content of the site, as they are there for aesthetic or decorative purposes only.
If an image on a site is decorative and is not relevant to the context, 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 automatically skip it.
Wix Editor
Studio Editor
- Go to your editor.
- Click Settings at the top and select Accessibility Wizard.
- Click Scan My Site in the Accessibility Wizard panel on the right.
- Select cards titled Alt text.
- Select the checkbox next to This image is decorative, it doesn't need a description.
Good to know:
You should add alt text to any images that contain links, and not mark them as decorative.
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
Unimportant 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.
