Missing ALT Text Checker: How to Find Every Image Without ALT Text in WordPress

If you have ever wondered which images on your site are missing their ALT text, you are not alone — and the honest answer is usually “more than you think.” WordPress gives you a field for ALT text on every image, but it never tells you which images are still blank. This guide shows you exactly how a missing ALT text checker works, compares the four ways to find empty ALT attributes, and walks you through auditing your entire media library in minutes — not by clicking through hundreds of images one by one.

What is a missing ALT text checker?

A missing ALT text checker is a tool that scans the images on a page or an entire website and reports which ones have no alt attribute, or an empty one that should not be empty. The alt attribute is the short text description attached to an image in the HTML. Screen readers read it aloud, and search engines use it to understand what the image shows.

The problem is that a missing ALT text is invisible in normal browsing. The page looks perfectly fine to a sighted visitor. You only discover the gap when you inspect the HTML, run an accessibility scan, or use a dedicated checker. That is why so many sites carry the issue for years without noticing.

A good checker answers three questions: which images are missing ALT text, how many there are, and where they live so you can fix them quickly.

Why missing ALT text is worth checking for

Empty ALT attributes are not a cosmetic issue. They hit two areas that matter to every WordPress site owner at once: search visibility and legal accessibility.

For SEO: when an image has no ALT text, Google loses its clearest textual signal about what that image contains. The image can still surface in search based on its filename and surrounding content, but it ranks well below images with a clear, descriptive ALT attribute. On image-heavy sites — blogs, portfolios, and especially WooCommerce stores — that is a steady, compounding loss of image search traffic that competitors may already be capturing.

For accessibility and compliance: a missing ALT attribute on an informational image is a WCAG 2.1 Level A failure under Success Criterion 1.1.1. Since 28 June 2025, the European Accessibility Act has required digital content published in the EU to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA, which it references through the EN 301 549 standard. In other words, finding and fixing missing ALT text moved from “nice to have” to a documented obligation, with penalties that vary by member state.

The 4 ways to check for missing ALT text

There is no single “right” way to find missing ALT text — it depends on whether you need to check one page or your whole site. Here are the four practical methods, from the most manual to the most automated.

1. Manual check in the WordPress Media Library

Open Media → Library, click each image, and look at the ALT Text field. It is free and built in, but it has two serious limits: WordPress does not show whether the field is filled from the grid view, so you must open every image individually, and it does not flag images that are technically present but useless (like an ALT of “image” or “DSC_0042”). For a site with more than a handful of images, this method does not scale.

2. Browser DevTools or a bookmarklet

On any single page, right-click an image and choose Inspect to see whether the <img> tag has an alt attribute. Power users can paste a one-line bookmarklet that outlines every image missing ALT text on the current page. This is great for spot-checking a specific page, but it only sees what is rendered in front of you — it cannot audit your full media library or pages you have not opened.

3. Online ALT text checkers

Several free web tools let you paste a URL and return a list of images missing ALT text on that single page. They are handy for a quick second opinion and require no installation. The catch: they check one URL at a time, they do not see images stored in your library but not yet published, and they cannot fix anything — you still go back into WordPress to make every edit by hand.

4. A WordPress ALT audit plugin (site-wide)

A dedicated plugin scans your entire media library at once, lists every image missing ALT text, and lets you fix it inline without leaving the dashboard. This is the only method that covers your whole site, distinguishes “missing” from “generic” or “duplicated,” and turns checking into fixing in the same place. Filikod was built specifically for this and assigns a measurable ALT Quality Score so you can track progress over time.

How to check missing ALT text with Filikod (step by step)

Filikod works directly inside the WordPress media library, so it is compatible with any theme, page builder, or WooCommerce setup — no configuration required. Here is the full process.

1. Install Filikod from the WordPress plugin directory. It runs on your existing media library immediately — there is nothing to set up.

2. Open the ALT Audit tab. Filikod scans your library and gives you an ALT Quality Score from 0 to 100, with your images grouped by issue type.

3. Open the “Missing” tab. Every image without an ALT attribute is listed in one place. This is the highest-impact group for both SEO and accessibility, so start here.

4. Fix inline. Type a descriptive ALT text directly next to each image, or use bulk actions to clear the backlog quickly. No spreadsheet, no external tool.

5. Re-run the audit to confirm your score improved and that no new gaps slipped in after your latest uploads.

“Missing” is only half the story: the hidden problems a checker should catch

Finding images with no ALT attribute at all is the obvious job. But a thorough checker also surfaces ALT text that technically exists yet adds no value — because those images will never show up in a basic “missing” count.

• Generic ALT text — values like “image”, “photo”, or “logo” describe the file type, not the content. They pass a naive “is it empty?” test while leaving all the SEO value on the table.
• Empty ALT used incorrectly — an empty alt="" is correct for purely decorative images (a screen reader skips them), but wrong for an informational image. Context decides which is which.
• Duplicated ALT text — the same description copied across many images, common on WooCommerce stores with product variants. To Google, it signals that your images are interchangeable.

If you want concrete wording for each case, our guide to good vs bad ALT text examples gives copy-and-paste templates for products, screenshots, charts, logos, and decorative images.

How to write the ALT text once you have found the gaps

The rule is simple: write for a person who cannot see the image, then confirm the description naturally includes relevant context. Keep it under about 125 characters, since screen readers often truncate longer strings and search engines give no extra weight to length. A few quick patterns:

How often should you check for missing ALT text?

Run a full audit when you first install a checker to establish a baseline. After that, check again following any major content or product upload — every new image is a chance for a fresh gap to appear. If you run a WooCommerce store with regular additions, a monthly cadence keeps your ALT Quality Score from quietly sliding backwards. For a deeper dive into product-image specifics, see our WooCommerce image SEO guide.

Frequently asked questions