WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Microsoft Word: Decorative Image Accessibility

for

From: Jonathan Avila
Date: Jun 26, 2019 12:07PM


I've had the decorative checkbox in Word 365 on Windows for months. I no longer have a title and description field -- just an alt text field.

Jonathan

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of glen walker
Sent: Wednesday, June 26, 2019 1:55 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Microsoft Word: Decorative Image Accessibility

CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.


In my version of Word 2016 (on a PC), there is not a "decorative" option for images. I know *Powerpoint* 2019 added a "decorative" checkbox. Not sure about Word 2019. I'm just double checking what version of Word you're using and where you're seeing the decorative checkbox. When I run the a11y checking in Word 2016, there's no mention of making decorative images.

And just one clarification, and it's kind of a nit-pick, but you said a blank alt text makes an image decorative for the web. I wanted to make sure you meant an empty alt text (quote-quote) and not a single blank character as the alt text. The latter is seen as a valid alt text and will read the blank. An empty alt text will essentially hide the image.


On Wed, Jun 26, 2019 at 10:33 AM Jim Homme < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Hi,
> This is with Word 2016.
>
>
> * The accessibility checker wants me to mark decorative images with a
> check box.
> * When I do that, JAWS says the word "Decorative" for these images.
> * NVDA does not say anything for these same images, unless I use the
> Advanced settings and use the experimental UIA settings.
> * On the web, blank alt text makes decorative images disappear for
> both screen readers.
> * I was lead to believe that if I put a single space as the alt text
> in Word, that a screen reader would ignore any image with a single
> space as alt text.
> * As a screen reader user, I am used to not hearing anything for
> decorative images, because this is how I was trained it should work.
>
> My question is: How should this work, since I do not necessarily know
> which screen reader a person might have when they read my Word document?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Jim
>
>
>
> ==========
> Jim Homme
> Digital Accessibility
> Bender Consulting Services
> 412-787-8567
>
> https://www.benderconsult.com/our%20services/hightest-accessible-techn
> ology-solutions
>
> > > archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> >