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Re: Alt Text in PowerPoint 2010

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From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Apr 13, 2011 8:12PM

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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