WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: PPT: alt tag on master slide

for

From: Karlen Communications
Date: May 21, 2019 6:15AM

Do you mean "does the screen reader read the Alt text while in Slide Master view?" Or are you wanting to have screen readers read the Alt text in Slide Layout view or Slide Show view?

I just checked a presentation I'm currently working on and while in Slide Layout view, the images I added in Slide Master view are not seen by the adaptive technology/screen readers/Text-to-Speech tools which is what I want. The images are decorative and used as "bling" and are not essential to the understanding of the content.

I can confirm that using the latest Office Insider for Office 365 subscription, PowerPoint desktop application, JAWS latest version is reading the Alt text on images on the Slide Master but is not reading the Alt text for those images once I switch to Slide Layout or Slide Show view...which is what I want. I don't want those decorative images to be seen by the adaptive technology.

While the latest version of Office 365 subscription PowerPoint desktop application does have the ability to mark an image on a slide as decorative, this is NOT backward compatible. This means that if I mark an image as decorative using "my" version of PowerPoint, if someone is using an earlier version, they will hear "graphic, and the dimensions of the image" My presentation will also be flagged by the accessibility checker as not being accessible because the images are missing Alt text in the earlier version of PowerPoint.

If you don't want the adaptive technology to see the images, the best way to add them is to put them on the Slide Master. You can add Alt Text to them on the Slide Master if you want. I used to do this but how many people go into Slide Master view, especially if they don't see the image on the slide? For me, as a person who uses a screen reader, putting images on the Slide Master that are just bling/filler means that I spend time reading the content and not "looking at the images which often had the Alt text 'decorative' instead of meaningful Alt text. I added the "decorative" designation to my decorative images instead of describing them because I just needed to know they are decorative - I don't need a description of them...which again would take time listening to but not gaining much information. Now I use a combination of putting decorative images on the Slide Master and using the Mark as decorative" check box in the Alt text Pane. Since I distribute my slides as a tagged PDF or as a Word tagged PDF, I don't worry about backward compatibility of the Mark as decorative feature. The Mark as decorative capability makes the images Artifacts when I tag the PowerPoint or Word documents.

Cheers, Karen