How to Run a Bulk Alt Text Audit (Site-Wide, Free)

Alt text is one of those tasks that is easy to do for a single image and painful to check across a whole site. You add it diligently for a while, then a bulk import, a CMS collection, or a busy publishing week leaves dozens of images with no alt, a filename where the description should be, or the same caption copied everywhere. A bulk alt text audit finds all of it at once, so you can fix it in a single pass instead of clicking through every page.

This guide walks through running a site-wide alt text audit for free, understanding the four problems worth finding, and fixing them quickly in WordPress and Webflow. For the fundamentals of writing good alt text, keep the alt text guide open alongside this.

Why alt text matters (quickly)

Alt text is the text a screen reader announces in place of an image. Without it, blind and low-vision visitors get nothing where your image should be, which is both an accessibility failure and, in many places, a legal expectation under standards such as WCAG. It is also how search engines understand an image, which drives Google Images traffic and gives context to the surrounding content.

The reason to audit in bulk rather than one page at a time is simple: alt-text problems cluster. A single unbound CMS field or one bulk upload can produce the same problem across hundreds of images at once, and you will never find those by spot-checking.

The four problems a bulk audit should find

A count of "images missing alt text" is a start, but it is not enough to act on. A useful bulk alt text audit groups the problems by type, because each type is fixed differently:

• Missing alt. The alt attribute is absent entirely or contains only whitespace. This is the classic accessibility failure. Note that an empty alt="" is not missing: it is the correct, valid way to mark a purely decorative image so screen readers skip it, and it should never be flagged.
• Filename as alt. The alt text is something like "IMG_2043.jpg" or "hero-banner-final.png", or it simply matches the image filename. This is as unhelpful to a screen reader as no alt at all, and it usually means alt text was auto-filled from the filename and never edited.
• Too long. The alt text runs well past the roughly 125 characters where many screen readers pause. Overlong alt is tiring to listen to and usually means a caption or paragraph was pasted into the alt field by mistake.
• Duplicate alt. The same non-empty alt text is shared across several different images. Identical alt on distinct images tells a screen-reader user nothing about what makes each one different, and often signals a template or bulk process copying one value everywhere.

Step 1: check a page instantly

Start with a single representative page to see the shape of the problem. Paste any URL into the free alt text checker and it scans every image on that page, then groups the results into exactly the four categories above: missing, filename as alt, too long, and duplicate. Each row shows the image source and its current alt, so you get an actual worklist rather than a number.

It works on any platform, because it reads the live rendered HTML: WordPress, Webflow, Shopify, Squarespace, and anything else. There is no signup and nothing to install, so it is the fastest way to see whether you have a real problem before committing to a full sweep.

Step 2: audit the whole site

A single page tells you the pattern; a site-wide sweep tells you the scale. To audit alt text across your whole site, run a full audit: on Pro (or the free 7-day trial) it crawls up to 50 pages, lists every unique image missing alt text, and packages the findings into a client-ready PDF report you can hand to a developer or a client. Because it dedupes by image source, the same image used in ten places is one line to fix, not ten.

This is what turns "we should sort out our alt text" into a concrete, finite task: a single list of images, grouped by problem, that you can work through and tick off.

Step 3: write good replacements

As you fix each flagged image, write alt text the way you would describe the picture to someone who cannot see it, in the context of the page:

• Aim for roughly 125 characters or fewer. Describe what matters, not every detail.
• Do not start with "image of" or "picture of": assistive tech already announces that it is an image.
• Do not keyword-stuff. One natural mention of a relevant term is fine; a list of keywords reads as spam.
• For genuinely decorative images (dividers, background flourishes), use an empty alt="" so screen readers skip them.

Where bulk alt-text problems come from

If a site-wide audit turns up hundreds of flagged images, it is almost never because someone forgot one at a time. Bulk problems have bulk causes, and recognising the cause tells you where to fix it once rather than image by image:

• CMS collections with no alt binding. On Webflow, Shopify, and any system with templated content, an image field that is not bound to an alt field ships every item with no alt. One unbound field can flag an entire collection.
• Bulk uploads and imports. Importing a media library, migrating from another platform, or uploading a folder of images at once usually brings the images in with no alt, or with the filename auto-filled as alt.
• Page builders pulling alt from filenames. Some builders default to using the image filename as the alt text, which is why you see so many "hero-banner-final.png" values that no human would ever write.
• Copied templates. Duplicating a page or a card component and not editing the alt is how the same caption ends up on a dozen different images, which is the duplicate-alt problem.

Because the causes are systemic, the fixes usually are too: correct the binding, fix the import defaults, or change the template, and a large batch of flagged images resolves in one change.

What a good bulk audit is not

It is worth being clear about what alt text is for, so a bulk fix does not create a new problem. Alt text describes an image for people who cannot see it; it is not a place to stuff keywords for search engines. A page where every image has a keyword-packed alt reads as spam to both assistive technology and Google, and it makes the experience worse for the exact users alt text exists to serve. When you work through a bulk list, resist the urge to optimise: describe the image plainly and move on. Good, honest descriptions are what earn image-search traffic anyway.

Equally, do not overcorrect on decorative images. If an image carries no information, a spacer, a background texture, a purely ornamental flourish, the right answer is an empty alt="", not a made-up description. Adding alt text to genuinely decorative images clutters the experience for screen-reader users. A good audit respects that distinction and never flags a valid alt="".

Fixing alt text in WordPress

On WordPress, the fastest fix for a bulk problem is the Media Library. Open an image there, fill in the Alternative Text field, and it updates everywhere that image is used. For images added in the block editor, the Alternative Text field sits in the block sidebar when the image is selected. If your flagged images all came from a single import or a page builder, check whether the builder is pulling alt from the filename by default and turn that off. For the platform-specific audit view, see the WordPress audit tool.

Fixing alt text in Webflow

On Webflow, the most common cause of a large batch of missing-alt images is a CMS collection whose image field has no alt binding. A static image takes its alt in the Settings panel of the selected image element, but a CMS collection image ships with no alt unless you bind the alt field to a text field in the collection. Bind that field once and every item in the collection publishes with real alt text, which fixes dozens of flagged images in a single change. The Webflow audit tool page covers this and the other Webflow-specific gaps in more detail.

Make it part of your workflow

Alt text is not a one-time cleanup, because every new image is a chance to reintroduce the problem. The most reliable approach is to re-run the audit whenever you publish a batch of content or import images: a quick single-page check with the alt text checker as you go, and a periodic full sweep to catch anything that slipped through. Done regularly, a bulk alt text audit takes minutes and keeps your site accessible, compliant, and visible in image search.