If you’re reading this article, I’m guessing you have at least some awareness of what alt text is for and how it’s used. HTML:
. Alt text is always required, how it is written can vary depending on the type of image. Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive. Content owners are the best resource for text descriptions since they know what information they want the image to convey. If short alt text is sufficient to describe an image, provide the short text via the image's alt attribute. Enforce that all elements that require alternative text have meaningful information to relay back to the end user. Now that any images that are decorative and do not convey any meaningful information have been untagged and thus ignored by screen readers, you can now focus on the remaining images. WCAG Technique H67 clearly states that:. The alt attribute is the preferred and most commonly used way to provide a text alternative for img and area elements. In this case, it is best to use what is called NULL alt text or empty alt text. See the example below. When the image is complex, including things such as charts, data, statistics, etc. If no alt attribute is present, the screen reader will read the file name for the image instead, which can be a major distraction to those using screen reading technology. Step 8: PDF Accessibility: Testing and Verification, 1600 Wilson Blvd., Suite 1010, Arlington, VA 22209 Tel: +1 202-902-0988 Fax: +1 202-559-7226, 320 March Road, Suite 602 Kanata, Ontario, Canada K2K 2E3 Tel: +1 613-270-9582 Fax: +1 613-270-0574, 1502 / 15 Caravel Lane, Docklands, Victoria Australia 3008 Tel: +614-0232-4978. WCAG 2.1 AA is an updated version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines that includes additional success criteria to help make the web more accessible. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 is a comprehensive set of recommendations for making content accessible to a broad range of people with disabilities. Automatically generated alt text for complex image. When writing alt-text, be sure to use plain language so that people can easily understand what’s important about the chart, image, etc., being described. However this is not within the WCAG guidelines. One of the first steps to web and document accessibility, providing accurate and appropriate descriptions for an image, can be critical to the overall goal of ensuring that content is accessible. See … Review WebAIM Alternative Text for appropriate use of alternative text. The following examples show multiple kinds of images, and how alt text should be used in each circumstance. Operable. During the 2008-2009 year there were 20320 students, of which, 5675 were new students. ... See the The WCAG 2.0 Documents for an explanation of how this document fits in with other Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) … For a more complex image, such as below, the alt-text will need to be much more descriptive. Alt text should be 140 characters or less. Alt-text can be used to increase understandability. It is not a substitute for the WCAG 2 specification, and it may not cover all use cases. Adding null alt text in a content management system (CMS) like Drupal is possible, but not as simple as leaving the alt text box empty. If a template lacks such a parameter, consider asking that it be added. When a screen reader comes across null alt text, it will completely skip over the image, not even announcing its presence. in a company's "Our Team" page) must have an alt text attribute for WCAG compliance. Because a screen reader reads out the title and type of a visual, you only need to fill in a description. An assistive technology is a hardware and/or software that acts as a user agent, or along with a mainstream user agent, to provide functionality to meet the requirements of users with disabilities that go beyond those offered by mainstream user agents. 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