Making your documents and presentations visually appealing is a great way to help students pay attention, understand, and remember the information you are sharing with them. Images can be used to break up text in a long document or to support the concepts being presented in a document or presentation.
When using images in an online document or presentation, you need to add alternative text (alt text) that describes the information or function represented by the image to convey the content or function of the image so it can also be understood even to those with visual or cognitive disabilities.
If an image is purely decorative and does not convey meaning, mark the alt text as “decorative” or leave the alt text field blank.
Images that convey simple information should contain alt text with a short description of the content conveyed in the image.
An example of an appropriate alt text description for an image might be “American psychologist Evelyn Hooker.”
Avoid using “image of” or “photo of” as alt text, unless this information is important based on the content of the page.
Complex images, like charts or graphs, should have detailed information included in the text on the page near the image.
Posters and similar images that contain words must have the same information presented in the text on the page near the image.
Canvas Guide Document. (2020). How do I manage alt text and display options for images embedded in the new rich content editor as an instructor? Retrieved from https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-26429-how-do-i-manage-alt-text-and-display-options-for-images-embedded-in-the-new-rich-content-editor-as-an-instructor
Google Help Center. (2020). Make your document or presentation more accessible - docs editors help. Retrieved from https://support.google.com/docs/answer/6199477?hl=en
National Center on Disability and Access to Education. (2020). NCDAE cheatsheets. Retrieved from http://ncdae.org/resources/cheatsheets/
Perkins school for the blind elearning. (2018). How to write alt text and image descriptions for the visually impaired. Retrieved from https://www.perkinselearning.org/technology/blog/how-write-alt-text-and-image-descriptions-visually-impaired
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. (2019). Section 508 Guide: Tagging PDFs in Adobe Acrobat Pro. Retrieved from https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/pdf-tagging.pdf