Figures & Images

Alternative text, or alt text, is a description of a visual element of a document such as a figure, graphic, or image.  Alt text is required for all images, figures and the like in order to ensure a document is accessible.  

Social Security Administration's Guide for Alternative Text and Images:  This guide from the SSA provides a wealth of information on creating and maintaining alternative text.   Samples, guidance and a list of common mistakes to help guide content creators. 

WebAIM Alternative Text:  From the group Web Accessibility in Mind, the page offers examples of alternative text best practices for images and figres with and without captions, and more. 

• Alt Text Decision Tree:  This resource helps users determine when and how to apply appropriate alternative text to different types of images and figures.      

Formulas & Equations

Formulas & equations require a different approach when making a document accessible due to the non-Roman characters, numerical elements and symbols.  Below are some resources that offer options for making formulas accessible within documents.

Federal Highway Administration Example:  this document shows the alternative text that the FHA used for their formulas.  The author created the formulas as an image and then posted descriptive text behind the image to provide access to the equation.

UCF Creating Accessible Equations: this page offers examples of alternative text for equations, providing 3 different types of text to describe equations.  Additionally, it provides a brief how-to of adding alt text in Word using Windows and Mac.   

Penn State University Accessibility:  Equations:  this page offers information on how to provide alternative text for equations using ALT Tags, and withing LaTeX, and MathML.  

MathML:  MathML is a tool to help present mathematical information on the web and within web based documents.  This page from W3C offers tutorials on creating mathematical expressions using MathML and provides additional links for authoring tools beyond a text editor. 

Charts & Graphs

Charts and graphs are often difficult to describe in a shortened way and therefore alt text may not be the best way to annotate them.  In these cases it is best to utilize a long description or a two-part alt text for the item.  Below are a couple guides to creating descriptions for these complex images.

W3C Complex Images: While W3C focuses on website accessibility and the WCAG 2.0 standard for accessibility, many of the same principles apply to documents as well as web content.  The tutorial offers some best practices for long descriptions.  

Social Security Administration's Guide for Alternative Text and Images:  As mentioned above this guide from the SSA provides a wealth of information on creating and maintaining alternative text.   Samples, guidance and a list of common mistakes to avoid are included as well as a section devoted to complex images.

Tables

Tables can often be difficult to make accessible: requiring a fair amount of touch-up in Adobe after converting from MS Word.  Below are some resources on the different types of tables and how to make both Data Tables and Complex Tables accessible.

Table Concepts--W3C Web Accessibility Initiative: provides an overview of table styles and why tables should be made accessible.  Links to additional information about how to make different elements accessible. 

• Using Adobe Acrobat Pro's Table Editor to repair mistagged tables: Adobe specific help for tables.
• How to Properly Tag a Table in Adobe Acrobat--CSUSM.edu:  how-to guide with screen shots illustrating how to acces and use the table editor function in Adobe.  This was created using an older version of Adobe, but the process and the way to access the tool has not changed. 

Creating Accessible Tables--WebAIM: covers both Layout and Data tables and elements in each such as headers, captions, summaries, etc