PDFs

All about alt text: specifying alt text in MS Word, PowerPoint, PDF, and in Canvas.

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Providing alternative text descriptions for images used in a document is an essential part of digital accessibility. Alt text can be entered in similar ways in applications like MS Word, PowerPoint, Acrobat PDF, and in Canvas. The alt text should relate to the purpose of the image rather than be a complete description of everything in the photo. Try to keep the alt text brief to around 125 characters as some accessibility checkers will flag alt text that’s too long as an issue. Sometimes it can be difficult to decide if a particular image should have alt text. This alt text decision tree app can help. It can also let you know if an image is considered a complex image and needs an even longer description.

Here are some tips for adding alt text in some of your favorite apps: MS Word, PowerPoint, Acrobat PDF, and in Canvas.

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MS Word

 

Checking for accessibility issues in a Word document is easy with the built-in accessibility checker that’s similar to the ones in other MS Office applications. The checker can easily spot instances of missing alt text.
To run the accessibility checker that’s built into Word:

  • Go to ‘File’ > ‘info’
  • Under ‘inspect document’ choose “Check accessibility”. The accessibility panel appears the right side of your document showing any issues.
  • While some issues have an easy fix, others may require ure more skill to correct. References are provided to assist in looking up how to fix issues.
  • To correct missing alt text issues, click on the Picture number that’s missing it in the accessbility issues list. Then choose ‘Add a description’ or ‘Mark as decorative’ if the picture is just of decoration.

In newer versions of Word, alt text is automatically generated when a picture is imported. You can check if the alt description is accurate enough by right-clicking on the image and choosing ‘View Alt Text’

You can learn more about MS Word document accessibility in the Office document accessibility BuckeyeLearn courses.

MS PowerPoint

Checking for accessibility issues in a PowerPoint presentation is easy with the built-in accessibility checker that’s similar to the ones in other MS Office applications.

To run the accessibility checker that’s built into MS PowerPoint:

  • Go to ‘File’ > ‘info’.
  • Under ‘inspect document’ choose “Check accessibility”. The accessibility panel appears the right side of your document showing any issues.
  • While some issues have an easy fix, others may require ure more skill to correct. References are provided to assist in looking up how to fix issues.
  • To correct missing alt text issues, click on the slide number that’s missing it in the accessbility issues list. Then choose ‘Add a description’ or ‘Mark as decorative’ if the picture is just of decoration.

In newer versions of PowerPoint, alt text is automatically generated when a picture is imported. You can check if the alt description is accurate enough by right-clicking on the image and choosing ‘View Alt Text’.

You can learn more about MS PowerPoint document accessibility in the Office document accessibility BuckeyeLearn courses.

Acrobat PDF

  • To find missing alt text issues in a PDF document, run the accessibility checker by going by clicking ‘Prepare for accessibility’ and then ‘Check for accessibility’. A list of issues comes up in the accessibility panel on the right.
  • For missing alt text issues, you can right-click on the issue and choose ‘Fix’. A box pops up allowing you to add alt text to each figure that is missing it. The alt text should relate to the purpose of the image rather than be a complete description of everything in the photo. Try to keep the alt text brief to around 125 characters. If the image is just of decoration instead of meaningful content, check the ‘Decorative figure’ box.

 

You can learn more about PDF document accessibility in the PDF accessibility BuckeyeLearn courses.

Canvas (Carmen or Scarlet)

  • Canvas course pages have a built-in accessibility checker in the rich text editor that’s available when you edit a course page. The checker can find missing alt text in a page and allow you to add some.
  • Edit a course page to get access to the checker. Click the checker icon to begin running a check.
  • A box on the right pops up allowing you to add alt text for any images missing it. If the image is just of decoration instead of meaningful content, check the ‘Decorative figure’ box.

 

You can learn more about Canvas course accessibility from this Carmen Canvas accessibility checklist from EHE.

Using Acrobat to make a PDF output from Adobe Express accessible

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Adobe Express is a great product with lots of useful and amazing design features. Unfortunately, it doesn’t currently produce tagged PDFs, so you’ll need to do some work in Adobe Acrobat Pro to make your PDF document fully accessible.

You can find out more about using Adobe Express itself at: https://it.osu.edu/adobe/

Here are some steps to take in Acrobat after exporting a PDF from Express:

  • First run the accessibility checker in Acrobat Pro by clicking ‘Prepare for accessibility’ and then ‘Check for accessibility’. A list of issues comes up in the accessibility panel on the right.Screenshot of where to launch the checker in Adobe Acrobat and the checker settings
  • Express doesn’t produce tagged PDFs so in Acrobat Pro you’ll need to right-click on the ‘tagged PDF failed’ issue and choose ‘Fix’. After the tagging process, you’ll notice other issues in the PDF.
    Screenshot of fixing the Tagged PDF Failed issue in the Acorbat accessibility panel results.
  • For missing alt text issues, you can right-click on the issue and choose ‘Fix’. A box pops up allowing you to add alt text to each figure that is missing it. The alt text should relate to the purpose of the image rather than be a complete description of everything in the photo. Try to keep the alt text brief to around 125 characters. If the image is just of decoration instead of meaningful content, check the ‘Decorative figure’ box.
    Screenshot of fixing a missing alt text issue in the Acorbat accessibility panel results.
  • While a lot of issues have an easy ‘Fix’ option, for some more complex you’ll need to do some research about how to fix and may need to modify things in the tags panel. For example, you may see a ‘heading nesting failed error’ that will require finding headings in the tags panel and updating them to the appropriate heading level to fit the document structure. If a heading skipped levels to be an <H3>, you could change it to be an <H2> in the tags panel, fixing the issues.
  • If you encounter a PDF with a lot of complex tag structure issues, be sure to save a copy of your original document so if the tag structure gets broken you have a backup to start over with.
  • Save your remediated PDF.

There is some more information about accessibility and Adobe Express in their VPAT. Hopefully in future versions additional accessibility improvements will be introduced. It would be great if a built-in accessibility checker can be added, similar to the one in MS Office applications and Adobe Acrobat. It would also be good to introduce an easy way to add alt text to images similar to what is available in Word and PowerPoint. Adding features like that would help Adobe Express stand out from competing products like Canva. For now, we’ll need to rely on using Acrobat to add accessibility to our Express PDFs.

You can learn more about PDF document accessibility in the PDF accessibility BuckeyeLearn courses.

Resources

Need more information about using Adobe Express?

Don’t have access to Acrobat Pro? Here are some other PDF apps that include accessibility checkers: