WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: MS Word accessibility supported for images?

for

From: Karlen Communications
Date: Aug 20, 2009 6:50PM

You are right in that Office for Mac doesn't let you provide Alt text. It is
also not accessible.

The other document part to avoid is the "paragraph frame" which is like a
text box but has a different name. In Word 2007 the new content controls are
inaccessible but using legacy controls for forms provides the same level of
accessibility as in Word 2003. Paragraph frames can be found in the new
style or modify style dialog under the Format button. Just say no!

I always recommend that captions be used for tables, images and equations in
the event that the document is printed or the Alt Text is not rendered to
the end user. The caption can be the same text as the Alt Text or different
text. As a person using a screen reader I'd rather use my keyboard commands
to skip over redundant information than to miss something.

Cheers, Karen