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Re: MS Word accessibility supported for images?

for

From: Julie Strothman
Date: Aug 20, 2009 7:25AM

Is it true that Word 2008 for Mac does not have the ability to add alternate
text?
I've not been able to find it, if you can--it's not an option in the 'Format
Picture' dialog box tabs, nor in the formatting pane.
-Julie Strothman

On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 9:03 AM, Moore,Michael <
<EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Well, yes and no. We have found with JAWS 9 and 10 and Office 2007 that the
> alternative text will be announced by the screen reader, just not
> consistently. We have not been able to determine what causes the variable
> behavior. There are also other methods that screen reader users can use
> while in Word to access the alternative text in the images, but in practice
> I have not observed many people doing this.
>
> If the document is converted to PDF or HTML the alternative text will
> definitely be present for the user. This saves a step when working from
> Word.
>
> More important in Word documents, is the use of styles to mark up headings.
> These are made available to the JAWS screen reader users and greatly improve
> navigation through the document. I am not sure about other ATs. These will
> also convert to headings in HTML and PDF.
>
> One thing to definitely avoid within Word documents are "text areas." These
> little gems that are frequently used for callouts, and misused for many
> other purposes, are generally missed by screen reader users. They do not
> appear within the normal document flow and thus are difficult to find. I
> have seen several hacks to get around the issue, but in practice I have not
> seen them work well in any version of JAWS that we have tested.
>
> Mike Moore
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto:
> <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Mark Magennis
> Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 5:38 AM
> To: Webaim Forum
> Subject: [WebAIM] MS Word accessibility supported for images?
>
> Can the use of text alternatives with images in Microsoft Word (DOC
> format) files be said to be accessibility supported? That is, are
> enough assistive technologies able to read the alt text if it is there?
>
> Thanks,
> Mark
>
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