Alternative Text: A Brief Introduction 


KATIE ALLEN: Welcome to our accessibility tutorial on alternative 
text. My name is Katie Allen, and I'm a program associate from 
the Vera Institute of Justice. This video is about adding 
alternative text to images and other non-text items in electronic 
materials to make them accessible for survivors with disabilities. 

Images help make our outreach training and educational 
materials more engaging and more accessible. Images also help 
convey information in a different way than just text. However, 
some survivors with disabilities will not be able to access the 
images, charts, graphs, and other visual content in our materials 
unless we include alternative text. 

In this video, I'll define alternative text and why it matters for 
survivors with disabilities. I'll share some examples of alternative 
text, and I'll demonstrate how to add alternative text and how a 
screen reader might read it out loud. 

First, what is alternative text? And why does alternative text 
matter for accessibility? Alternative text is text that briefly 
describes the meaning of an image, graph, chart, or any other 
non-text item. You can add it to the format of the image or non-
text item in an electronic document or in web content. Alternative 
text is not visual. It's mostly for survivors using screen readers 
and other assistive technologies. 


What are screen readers? Our blind survivors, deaf-blind 
survivors, and some survivors with low vision use alternative text 
to access images and other non-text content in electronic 
materials, including on our Word documents PowerPoints, PDFs, 
and on websites. Screen readers read alternative text aloud and 
refreshable Braille displays. another type of assistive technology 
convert alternative text to Braille. Some survivors with learning 
disabilities and other cognitive disabilities may also use screen 
readers to help with visual or reading comprehension. 

When should we use alternative text? And how can we find it in 
documents and online? We should always use alternative text 
anytime you have an image, photo, chart, graphic, button, 
symbol, logo, or any non-text element in an electronic document 
on your website and on social media. 

Remember, survivors may request documents electronically so 
that they can access the document with a screen reader. You 
want to have alternative text and all shareable materials, 
including brochures, flyers, presentation materials, and any PDFs 
that we want to share electronically. You can also add alternative 
text on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. I'll share an example 
now of how screen reader reads alternative text allowed for this 
image. 

SCREEN READER (VOICEOVER): Purple ribbon for domestic 
violence awareness image. 


KATIE ALLEN: So the screen reader read the image as purple 
ribbon for domestic violence awareness, and that was the 
alternative text that we added to this image. Alternative text is 
not just for electronic documents. It's also for web-based 
documents. 

In many cases, your website and social media pages are the 
gateways for survivors to access services. On your website, you 
want to be sure that every non-text item has alternative text, and 
there are usually more non-text items on websites than there are 
in PowerPoints, flyers, and brochures. And that's because non-
text items include things like buttons, symbols, logos, and 
thumbnails, for example. 

The website accessibility evaluation tool or WAVE can help you 
learn if there are access errors on your website and it's free. So 
you can either copy and paste your website's URL into the WAVE 
engine or you can add a browser plugin that you can click when 
you're visiting any website to check for accessibility. The results 
will come up on a sidebar. 

In this example, you'll notice that WAVE has flagged six errors. 
And some of these areas might include missing alternative text 
from images. You can click on the details to find out what type of 
errors have been flagged, and it also explains how to fix these 
errors in user-friendly terms. 


Next, we'll share some tips about how to write alternative text, 
and then we'll go over how to add alternative text in Microsoft 
PowerPoint and on Facebook. How would you describe this 
image? Context matters most of all. 

What story are you telling with this image? What information are 
you trying to convey? I've described this image as a survivor and 
a female crisis counselor are meeting in a counseling room. The 
counselor listens and takes notes. 

This could be different depending on the meaning you're trying to 
convey. You might say two women meeting to discuss legal 
matters in a private room or two people having a serious 
discussion about housing resources or a counselor meets with a 
family member of a survivor to offer support. Want to be 
accurate. You don't need to include extra information that's not 
otherwise conveyed by doing the image visually. 

Be sure to describe the meaning of the image not just its 
appearance. Describing the meaning and the message that the 
image conveys is most important, not the way that it looks. Want 
to avoid being redundant so we don't need to copy the text that 
we've already included elsewhere like in the caption to describe 
the image. And you don't need to add the words image of or 
picture of because that's already implied. As you notice on our 
screen reader demonstration, the screen reader read that the 
purple ribbon was an image after it read the alternative text. 


Here's some ideas of how not to describe an image. This first 
example is too long, and it includes a lot of unnecessary 
information. It says two women sitting in an office on green-
spotted armchairs, talking and taking notes. One woman is 
wearing an aqua shirt with a blazer and the other woman is 
facing her and has red hair. 

The second example is too short. It just says two women. And 
that doesn't convey all the relevant information. 

Image captions, on the other hand, offer more information than 
alternative text. Captions might explain more context. A screen 
reader will read both so they should not be exactly the same. 

So in this example, the caption says, Portsmouth, Virginia, April 
5, 2019. Sailors assigned to the aircraft carrier USS George W. 
Bush, stand next to flags with encouraging messages during a 
kickoff event for Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month. 
But the alternative text might say, two US Navy soldiers stand in 
support of survivors of sexual violence with a flag that says, 
always stop it before it starts. 

Next, I'll demonstrate how to add alternative text to an image. To 
add alternative text in PowerPoint, it will be different depending 
on your version of PowerPoint and whether or not you're using a 
Mac or a PC. I'm using PowerPoint from Mac from 2019. 


So first, I'll right click the image. And I'll select Edit Alt Text from 
the dropdown menu. Next, a sidebar will appear on the right of 
your screen, and this is the space to add alternative text for all 
visual content. This is what the screen reader will read as we 
demonstrated earlier. 

The alternative text box is a prompt that says, how would you 
describe this object in its context to someone who is blind? One 
to two sentences recommended. And you'll notice that PowerPoint 
has already automatically generated a description, but the 
description is not accurate. And it says a picture containing a 
person, outdoor, young. 

However, alternative text that we want to add is more specific. 
We will describe this image as young Black woman with glasses, 
standing on a train station platform, smiling confidently. And then 
you can close the window. 

There are other ways to add alternative text based on your 
version of Microsoft Office. So another way to add alternative text 
is to go to the Format dropdown menu and choose Format 
Object. Then you will click on the Size and Properties option, and 
that's the option with the square and arrows pointing in different 
directions. Then you click Alt Text from that list. The Alt Text box 
will appear on the sidebar as it did before, and you can add a title 
and a brief description there. 


So Facebook also automatically generates alternative text for 
your images. But it's also almost always inaccurate. And I'll show 
you next how to add alt text for Facebook photos. 

So you want to click on the photo in Facebook to open it in full 
view. This is a photo of my cat. Then you go to the bottom of the 
photo where you have the options to like comment, share, tag 
photo options, and send in Messenger. And we'll select Options. 

When you select Options, a menu will appear and you want to go 
to the menu option with the magnifying glass icon that says 
Change Alt Text. It's the second option from the top right after 
Add Location. We'll click Change Alt Text and a pop-up box that 
gives you the space to change the alternative text appears. 

So we want to change the alternative text because, right now, it 
just says cat and indoor. That's the automatically generated 
option. We want to be more specific. So we'll change it to say 
Artemis, the Cow Cat is sitting on her desk looking very surprised 
in front of a lamp. And then you can just click Save. 

So to recap, alternative text is important for survivors with a 
variety of disabilities. All images, charts, graphics, graphs, and 
any non-text item and electronic and web-based materials should 
include alternative text. Survivors who use assistive technologies 
access our images and non-text items through alt text. 


Alternative text descriptions should be accurate and succinct and 
describing the meaning of the image or non-text item. You can 
add alternative text in Microsoft Office and on Facebook. And you 
can check your website's alternative text with WAVE, the website 
accessibility evaluation tool. 

And finally, captions and alternative text should be different from 
each other. This video on alternative text is part of a disability 
and death resource center series of how-to videos to help your 
agency increase accessibility of your services outreach and 
programs to reach survivors with disabilities. This how-to video 
series includes videos about how to improve accessibility of 
outreach, educational, training, and intake materials. We also 
have videos about general accessibility guidelines to help ground 
this work. 

The Vera Institute of Justice Center on Victimization and Safety 
created this video series with a grant from the Office of Violence 
Against Women at the Department of Justice. The Center on 
Victimization and Safety or CVS at the Vera Institute of Justice 
works to ensure that victim services effectively identify, reach, 
and meet the needs of marginalized crime survivors. We work 
with survivors to build and strengthen the capacity of 
communities, organizations, and providers to respond effectively 
to and prevent sexual violence, domestic violence, and other 
forms of abuse against people with disabilities and deaf people. 


So thank you for watching our video. Ending abuse of people with 
disabilities is a team effort. Please contact us for support. The 
End abuse email address is at vera.org. The End Abuse phone 
number is 212-376-3096, and the End Abuse toll free phone 
number is 855-274-8222.