Alt text in Word

Whenever you use images in a document, they must be inline with the text and have alt text, so that a screen reader can access them. This relates to WCAG 1.1.1 which states:

All non-text content that is presented to the user has a text alternative that serves the equivalent purpose.

Video instructions

Microsoft Office applications all use a similar method for adding alt text, so although the video that follows was created using Word, the same method can be used for PowerPoint and Outlook.

00:00

Video transcript

To add alt text to an image in Microsoft Word, there are two ways you can do it. If you're using a mouse, click on the image to select it, right click and select edit alt text. If you don't use a mouse, make sure that your picture is selected, hit the alt key. That will take you into the menus, and go to picture format, which is JP. Then select alt text, which is AT.

In this case, automatically generated alt text has been provided. A person and person posing for a picture, description automatically generated with low confidence. We're going to change that as it's not very descriptive.

So we've selected all of it. I'll delete that, and I've already pre-prepared some alt text which I'm going to paste in. It says: Scarborough's town crier and his wife wearing their official bright red gold trimmed coats and hats. The town crier is ringing a large hand bell. Now I can close the alt text.

One other thing to check is that the image is inline. The inline with text option should be chosen, not any of the other wrapping options. That way a screen reader will recognise the image and read the alt text.

Text instructions

  1. Select the image.
  2. Either right-click and select Edit Alt Text or go to the Format Picture menu and select Alt Text.
  3. Delete any automatically generated alt text.
  4. Type your alt text in the box.
  5. Check that your image is inline with text (not wrapped).