Creating Text Alternatives

Introduction:

This ADE will provide you with a quick introduction on how to create text alternatives for images.

At the end of this ADE, you will have gained some awareness of the issue and difficulties of creating text alternatives.

Note: This ADE was created knowing that it is not accessible to those with visual impairments.

What to Do:

1. To begin please watch the following videos for an introduction to text alternaties:.
   • The video "Web Sites That Work!", from  the Before and After Considering Accessibility ADE, it provides a general intorduction to the use of alternative text that you should watch (or review)
   • The Web Accessibility Alt Text and Long Descriptions video provides a description of technical solutions to providing text alternaties for images.
2. Write a text alternative for each of the following three (3) images.
   • Image 1 (Website)
   • Image 2 (Website)
   • Image 3 (Website)
3. Go to the Text Alternative Tool for Images (TATI) Website and create an account.
4. Review the Instructions, which are under the "Instructions" tab and explore the tool.
5. Once you are logged in, go to the "Images" tab and add the three (3) images from above. For each image:
   1. Identify the main parts or components of the image that should be described. This may include an object, person, place, area of the image, landmark, or background.
   2. While considering the purpose and the context of the image, answer the questions and complete the statements about each part of the image identified and assign the importance of each piece of information.

What to Hand-in:

Submit a report answering the following questions:

1. Describe some situations where a person may benefit from text alternatives.
2. What were the three text alternatives that you initially wrote for the three (3) images?
3. After you used TATI, do you feel you could have written better text alternatives? Why or why not?
4. What difficulties (if any) did you experience in reading, understanding, or using this web application?
5. What suggestions do you have on improving the web application or parts thereof?

What Else You Can Do (optional - not required):

1. For each of the three (3) images, allocate the statements to the different containers (on the "Allocate" tab).
2. For each of the three (3) images, write new text alternatives and compare with what you initially wrote.
3. You can watch this video on Using alt text on images in Microsoft Word.