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Re: Alt Text in PowerPoint 2010

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From: John E Brandt
Date: Apr 13, 2011 7:33PM


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
<EMAIL REMOVED>
207-622-7937
Augusta, Maine, USA


-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Terrill Thompson
Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2011 8:35 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List ( <EMAIL REMOVED> )
Subject: [WebAIM] Alt Text in PowerPoint 2010

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
<EMAIL REMOVED> | 206/221-4168