What this check inspects
Shipwork reads the raw HTML of a set of your pages and counts: images with no alt attribute at all, links whose text is a generic phrase such as "click here" or "read more", form fields with no label or aria-label, iframes with no title, duplicate id attributes, and pages with no lang attribute on the html element. It also counts elements that use a positive tabindex. An empty alt is not counted as a missing one, because an empty alt is the correct markup for a decorative image.
What a failure means
Images with no alt attribute, links with no useful text, unlabelled form fields and untitled iframes are warnings: each leaves a screen reader with nothing useful to announce. Duplicate ids, a missing lang attribute and a positive tabindex are informational, because they break references, pronunciation or the natural tab order rather than removing the content outright. A clean result means none of these raw-HTML faults were found; it is not a claim that the page passes WCAG.
How to fix it
- Add a short, specific alt attribute to every informative image, and keep alt="" for genuinely decorative ones.
- Replace link text like "click here" or "read more" with a phrase that describes the destination.
- Give every form field a visible label, or at least an aria-label.
- Add a title to every iframe so a screen-reader user knows what it contains.
- Make each id unique, set the page language on the html element, and use tabindex="0" rather than a positive value.
A typical failure, worked through
The setupA theme uses placeholder text as the only label for the search and newsletter fields, and a hero image is added without an alt attribute.
What the check reportsThe check reports a form field with no label, an image with no alt attribute, and a handful of links whose text is only "read more".
The pointNone of this changes how the page looks to a sighted visitor. It changes whether a screen reader can find the search box or describe the hero, which is exactly the failure a score alone does not explain.