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Re: Null ALT in Office

for

From: Elle
Date: May 30, 2013 6:49PM

Just a note - alt text is supported now in Mac versions of MS Word and
PowerPoint.

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the people to gather wood,
divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast
and endless sea.
- Antoine De Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince


On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 7:48 PM, Whitney Quesenbery < <EMAIL REMOVED> >wrote:

> Office 2011 + a maintenance release was the first version to support alt
> text. It's pretty consistent, in the US version: right click on any sort of
> object and you get a format option, and Alt Text is the last item in the
> format pane menu.
>
> I've never been cheered when I told a training class that they needed an
> update before, but in one case, someone was thrilled because they finally
> had a strong reason why they absolutely positively had to have the new
> version.
>
> Now, if they would just make the Mac versions produce tagged PDF files.
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 11:31 AM, Cliff Tyllick < <EMAIL REMOVED>
> >wrote:
>
> > Pratik, that's true, and the interface in Word 2010 might even depend on
> > whether you're editing a 2007 .docx versus a 2010 .docx. (I haven't
> tested
> > that carefully.)
> >
> > In Office 2007, the place for adding alt text was generally under "Size,"
> > but as I recall it did vary based on the type of item. Pictures were
> > different from Clip Art which were different from Charts which were
> > different from… and so on.
> >
> > And before I said to put an empty space between the quotes—I think I'm
> > recalling Word 2007 or even 2003, where just an empty space (no quotes)
> was
> > the kludgy fix. In Word 2010 (all of Office 2010), it's two double
> > quotes—""—just as Jukka said.
> >
> > Which, of course, doesn't get converted to the appropriate tagging when
> > the document is saved as either HTML or PDF. And that's why I consider
> this
> > method to be not just an afterthought, as Jukka has noted, but also a
> hack.
> >
> > To further the complications, Word for Mac OS has a different code base,
> > which is not a bad thing in itself. But Microsoft gives that as the
> reason
> > that alt text is not supported at all in Office 2008 for Mac. (I don't
> know
> > about later versions.)
> >
> >
> > Indeed, I haven't yet heard of a word processor for Mac OS that does
> offer
> > the ability to associate alt text with illustrations.
> >
> > Cliff
> >
> >
> >
> > > > From: Pratik Patel < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> > To: 'WebAIM Discussion List' < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> > Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2013 9:07 AM
> > Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Null ALT in Office
> >
> >
> > Here is another wrinkle in the Word alt attribute story. You will notice
> > that the menu item is different depending on whether you're editing the
> > older .doc type document or the newer .docx type document.
> >
> >
> >