Alternate Text Best Practices

Alternate Text Best Practices for 508 Compliance

This video is going to show alternate text best practices for Section 508 Compliance.

What exactly is alternate text? Informative images are any image that add to the context of a page. If the content of a page would suffer when an image was removed, then that image is informative, and it needs to have alternate text.

• Describe the image as concisely as possible. As a rule of thumb, avoid writing text alternatives longer than 100 characters. Having long alternate text will result in a poor user experience for those using screen readers. If the image requires that lengthier description it is better to describe the image in the content and provide shorter alt text.
• Avoid having a file extension as the alternate text.
• Avoid using the words picture of or image of in alternate text.
• Avoid using pictures of text.
• Ensure that all images are set to inline.
• Ensure that your alt text is clear and concise, remember to try to make it less than 100 characters if you can.

Learn how Digital Echo’s accessibility services can help you identify alternate text best practices, potential issues in your documents and how to best meet accessibility standards within your organization.