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Thread: Alt Text in PowerPoint 2010
Number of posts in this thread: 9 (In chronological order)
From: Terrill Thompson
Date: Wed, Apr 13 2011 6:36PM
Subject: Alt Text in PowerPoint 2010
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Hi All,
What's the current status of alt text in PowerPoint 2010? It's always seemed pretty progressive to me that Microsoft is providing an opportunity to tag images with both a Title and Description, Title (in theory) being analogous to the HTML alt attribute, and Description being an optional longer description for more complex images. Last I heard though, the general recommendation was to avoid the Title field and enter conventional alt text into the Description field, since the latter was the only field of the two that was reliably supported by assistive technologies and HTML/PDF conversion tools. Is this still the case? Is there any AT or conversion tool at all that supports both fields? It's a shame to have this feature and never be able to use it.
Thanks for any updates or insights.
Terrill Thompson
Technology Accessibility Specialist
DO-IT, UW Accessible Technology
UW Information Technology
University of Washington
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From: John E Brandt
Date: Wed, Apr 13 2011 7:33PM
Subject: Re: Alt Text in PowerPoint 2010
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I believe that is still the case. A PPT 2007 file that has had "Alt text"
added shows that information in the Description box and nothing in the Title
when converted and saved in PPT 2010. I am not sure if any AT reads the
Title "tag" but this is what MS offers as way of explanation:
"A title can be read to a person with a disability and is used to determine
whether they wish to hear the description of the content"
This statement come from the "Inspection Results/Additional Information"
that gets created when you run the Accessibility Checker in PPT 2010.
BTW, the Accessibility Checker also checks a number of other things
including whether "objects," "Content Placeholders," shapes such as
"rectangles," and "straight arrows" also have Alt text. The checker also
looks for Slide Titles ensuring there is on and that each have a unique
name, and on slides with multiple text boxes, instructs the author to check
and make sure the reading order of the slide makes sense.
~j
John E. Brandt
www.jebswebs.com
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Augusta, Maine, USA
From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Wed, Apr 13 2011 8:12PM
Subject: Re: Alt Text in PowerPoint 2010
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PPT 2010 and Word 2010 only use the Description field when publishing to PDF.
There is an interesting bug in Word however that merits mention. When you create a new Word document the file format seems to be docx before it is saved. The issue comes when you create a document, insert an image, and add title and/or description, and then save as .doc instead of .docx.
If the Title value is set as "a ball" and the description is "a red ball sitting on a green lawn", when you save as .doc the title and description are combined and entered into the single alt text field used with the .doc format for images, and on top of that, some additional information is added for you. What you get in the alt text field is: "Title: a ball - Description: a red ball sitting on a green lawn".
The big risk is if you create a document that has title and/or description for a bunch of images and then you save it as .doc. That creates a lot of extra work in fixing those images.
Thanks,
AWK
Andrew Kirkpatrick
Group Product Manager, Accessibility
Adobe Systems
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From: Karlen Communications
Date: Thu, Apr 14 2011 4:27AM
Subject: Re: Alt Text in PowerPoint 2010
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JAWS 12 reads both Title and Description but does not make any distinction.
Currently there is no setting to choose which one is read.
Cheers, Karen
From: Karlen Communications
Date: Thu, Apr 14 2011 5:00AM
Subject: Re: Alt Text in PowerPoint 2010
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Am not sure what the bug is. The Title and Description are on two lines in
the PDF Alt Text TouchUp Properties dialog. They read as they do in Word,
first Title and then Description and each is identified as either Title or
Description in the tagged PDF.
I am using JAWS 12 and Word 2010 to view the DOC file so maybe there is more
to this when you open the document in Word 2003? Maybe I've been working in
Office 2010 too long to recognize the bug?
Maybe this is a good bug...a feature?
BTW a message from the Section 508 list indicates that with SP1 of Office
2011 for Mac you can now add Alt Text to images. Haven't downloaded and
installed SP1 for Office for Mac 2011 yet but looking forward to trying this
out.
Cheers, Karen
From: Karlen Communications
Date: Thu, Apr 14 2011 7:33AM
Subject: Re: Alt Text in PowerPoint 2010
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OK, got it.
BTW Office 2010 lets you add Alt Text to tables...it is called "table
descriptions" in the What's New document. I haven't tested it with tagged
PDF yet but JAWS 12 doesn't read it in Word. Then again it is a new
tool/feature. I think it is like the HTML table summary?
In Word, select a table and under Table Properties there is now an Alt text
tab. It can be applied in Word, PowerPoint and Excel but not Publisher.
Cheers, Karen
From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Thu, Apr 14 2011 7:51AM
Subject: Re: Alt Text in PowerPoint 2010
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Karen,
The bug is that when you enter title and description into the appropriate fields in a DOCX file using Word 2012 and then save that document as a DOC, the information is concatenated (might be ok) and "title:" and "description:" are added to the concatenated string. This is like starting all HTML alt attribute values with "alt:".
Thanks,
AWK
Andrew Kirkpatrick
Group Product Manager, Accessibility
Adobe Systems
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From: Jared Smith
Date: Thu, Apr 14 2011 7:57AM
Subject: Re: Alt Text in PowerPoint 2010
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On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 4:59 AM, Karlen Communications
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> BTW a message from the Section 508 list indicates that with SP1 of Office
> 2011 for Mac you can now add Alt Text to images.
More or less. It's under the Format Picture context menu. There are
both "Title" and "Description" options. The explanation notes that
"The screen reader first reads the title. The person can then decide
whether to hear a longer description." As you'll see below, this is
far from accurate.
When saved as HTML, it makes the most ugly, standards non-compliant
HTML I've ever seen - 29KB of HTML for a page that contained only one
image. Much worse than previous versions of Word. I uploaded an
example to http://webaim.org/temp/word2012.htm WARNING: This source
code may cause high levels of nausea.
I'll also note that Word 2012 offers no option for "Filtered HTML".
It also makes the alternative text:
alt="Title: I am the title - Description: I am the description."
It adds "Title: " or "Description: ", even if only one of the boxes is
utilized. And why the " - " in between?
In PowerPoint, it automatically adds the embedded image file name to
the Description field. There is no option (thankfully) to save as
HTML, but like Word, Office 2012 is still incapable of creating
accessible PDF files, so the alternative text is lost when saving as
PDF.
So, Word does precisely what Andrew described as being a "bug". It
doesn't appear to be a bug, but instead an indication that Microsoft
has no idea how image accessibility and web standards are supposed to
work.
I can't believe we still have to deal with this garbage from
Microsoft. And in Office 2012! Adding a basic alt attribute to an
image is not rocket science, is it?
</rant>
Jared
From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Thu, Apr 14 2011 8:03AM
Subject: Re: Alt Text in PowerPoint 2010
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:) I'd still call it a bug since the same behavior doesn't seem to exist in PowerPoint 2010, just Word.
Thanks,
AWK
Andrew Kirkpatrick
Group Product Manager, Accessibility
Adobe Systems
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