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Re: Disappearing Alt Text in PowerPoint

for

From: Bevi Chagnon
Date: Mar 16, 2012 3:33PM

Haven't heard of this problem before.
Sarah, if you find or develop any solution to it, can you post it to the
list?
--Bevi Chagnon

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Bevi Chagnon | <EMAIL REMOVED>
PubCom - Trainers, consultants, designers, and developers
Print, Web, Acrobat, XML, eBooks, and Federal Section 508
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-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Bourne, Sarah
(ITD)
Sent: Friday, March 16, 2012 2:27 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: [WebAIM] Disappearing Alt Text in PowerPoint

One of our agencies is in the process of upgrading their desktop Microsoft
Office to 2007. They do quite a bit of re-use and re-purposing of documents
and have uncovered a problem with conversion of old PowerPoint decks.

They have files that were created in PowerPoint 97 and 2003. The authors
provided Descriptions for the charts. When they are opened in and saved as
PowerPoint 2007, the descriptions are still there. However, when you open
the 2007 .pptx version in PowerPoint 2010, the descriptions have
disappeared. They don't show up on the Format Object - Alt Text tab, the
accessibility checker flags the images as missing alt text, and screen
readers don't read them.

When I open the slideN.xml file from the 2010 .pptx, you can see the
original Description text. Here is some sample before and after code:
Before:
<p:cNvPr id="0" name="Picture 2" descr="Original alternative text"/>
After:
<p:cNvPr id="23554" name="Object 2" descr="Alternative text added in 2010
Alt Text dialog"/>

Is there a way to recover this alternative text without re-entering it? Or a
way to preserve it when saving the .ppt to .pptx? We certainly hope so,
because there are hundreds of files with this problem.

I posted this issue at Microsoft Answers yesterday, but haven't gotten an
answer yet.
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2010-powerpoint/alter
native-text-description-for-charts-disappears/bb5f79d7-5660-447a-94b8-ac940c
ad826b If you are having this problem, too, it would be nice if you would
"Me Too" it at Microsoft Answers. Maybe it will get more attention.

sb


Sarah E. Bourne
Director of Assistive Technology &
Mass.Gov Chief Technology Strategist
Information Technology Division
Commonwealth of Massachusetts
1 Ashburton Pl. rm 1601 Boston MA 02108
617-626-4502
<EMAIL REMOVED>
http://www.mass.gov/itd