Marshall Online’s “Designing for All, Habit by Habit” initiative is our way of making accessibility a core part of our workflow at Marshall. We believe that small, consistent actions – practical design habits – lead to big, positive changes over time. By incorporating digital accessibility standards and UDL principles, we’re building a more inclusive digital experience, one habit at a time.
Get in the Habit
Add meaningful alternative text (alt text) as you incorporate images into courses, presentations, or webpages. Incorporating alt text into your content creation workflow, right when you add the image, significantly streamlines the process, leading to greater efficiency and more accurate descriptions than attempting to remediate them later. Alt text is a brief, descriptive text that accompanies an image on a webpage or in a digital document. Screen readers announce this text, allowing users with visual impairments to understand the image’s content and purpose within its context.
Why This Habit Matters
- Accessibility Compliance: All digital content at Marshall University must meet WCAG 2.1 AA (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) standards, according to the ADA Title II update.
- Ensure everyone has access to (visual) information: When digital images lack alt text, they become invisible to users with visual impairments, including those who rely on screen readers.
- Connection to Universal Design for Learning: Integrating UDL principles means proactively designing for all. Meaningful alt text supports multiple means of representation, ensuring information is presented in flexible ways.
Best Practices
- Include alt text when adding an image as part of the content design process.
- Make the description concise.
- Consider the purpose, target audience, and context for the image.
- Mark “decorative” images that do not contribute information.
- If the image includes text (e.g., a promotional flyer), include that information in the alt text or as a caption.
- If you share an image (e.g., a line graph or historical painting) in a video lecture, briefly describe it.
Try using Gen AI, such as CoPilot or ChatGPT, to create alt text for an image and revise as needed. You can also use it to create accessible text from a picture with text, such as a picture of handwritten notes on a whiteboard.
Tools that Support Alt Text
- For images in Blackboard, use Ally’s recommendations and auto-generate description.
- For guidance on complex images, use the W3C’s Alt Decision Tree.
- For accessible formulas and equations, use Blackboard’s Math Editor. Avoid using images for formulas and equations whenever possible.
ADA National Network on Alternative Text
Additional Resources
- W3C WAI Images Tutorial – This comprehensive resource helps you determine what alt text is appropriate and why for different types of images, including graphs, maps, and icons.
- Alt Text Examples from Harvard: Harvard University’s Digital Accessibility page offers several alt text examples for photos, illustrations, and diagrams as well as considerations for different contexts.
- Marshall University Online: Digital Accessibility and Universal Design for Learning – This page contains accessibility information, resources, and services at Marshall University. You can also explore other habits that support digital accessibility and UDL in our Designing for All, Habit by Habit Series.