In our most recent tip sheet from AccessATE and DeafTEC, we go over various tips for improving workplace communication for blind and low vision employees. The tip sheet mentions adding descriptive or alternative text for photos, charts, and graphs, which we’ve also touched on in a previous tip sheet and blog post. Here, we’ll dive into more detail about best practices for crafting and adding alternative (alt) text, both for electronic documents and online.
Tip Sheet: Workplace Communication for Blind & Low Vision Employees
Alt text, sometimes called alternate text, descriptive text, or alternative text, is text that supplements an element, such as an image, or substitutes for it if it cannot be rendered. It’s what screen readers will use to convey information about an image to a blind/low vision user. The webpage version of this is the HTML “alt” attribute, which you have likely encountered before without realizing it, as the use of alt attribute has become increasingly common in coding. One does not always need to know how to code to use it, as many programs and webpages have interfaces that allow you to set alt attribute values by simply filling out a text field. It’s...
