Ally and Alt Text

Instructors – can all your students “see” the images in your course? For students using screen-readers, alt text is essential for viewing an image.

Ally, a tool active in Brightspace to help you improve the accessibility of your content, provides coaching on how to add alt text to images in your Brightspace course.  Ally uses the phrase image description to refer to alt text.

How can Ally help?

Ally can…

• Check for the presence of alt text on an image, including within documents
• Explain how to add alt text directly to an image
• Explain how to reupload documents after adding alt text
• Provide coaching on what “meaningful” alt text looks like

This video demonstrates you can use Ally to add alt text:

Video not loading? Watch on Youtube.

You can also check out Ally for LMS’s tutorial, Add Image Descriptions, for more guidance.

What should I write?

Ally cannot review the quality of the alt text you’ve written. Since you are the expert leading your students through the concepts conveyed in your images, you are the one best equipped to decide what the alt text should say!

One helpful first step is to categorize the image based on its purpose and function. Typically, images will fall into one of five categories:

• Text images contain words as pictures.
• Decorative images are part of the page layout and serve no educational purpose. All concepts can be understood without the image.
• Descriptive images offer educational and informational benefit.
• Complex images include graphs, figures, and models.
• Functional images include navigation buttons and clickable links.

Category	What do they look like?	Where could they appear in my course?	What should the alt text say?
Text	Any image that displays words, including GIFs and memes	Logos with text, motivational phrases, overview images that feature words	Repeat the words and provide any additional context.
Decorative	Any image that is there purely for decorative purpose; without the image, the page still makes sense	Layout-enforcing images or logos that offer no educational value in context and could be swapped out with any image without changing the meaning	Write “” or check “Mark as decorative.” This labels the image as decorative and a screenreading device will skip it.
Descriptive	Any image that provides meaningful and valuable information to aid in mastering a course concept or assessment of that mastery	Overview images, required content, images on documents, images on quizzes, images requiring analysis	Short and succinct is better, but add more description as needed, especially if the image illustrates a key concept or needs to be distinguished from other adjacent images.
Complex	Any chart, graph, map, theoretical model, or image requiring complex analysis	Required content, quiz questions	Direct students to another resource that helps to interpret the information, such as an adjacent data table containing the data used to create the figure. The alt text could also provide a URL to a web page that provides the longer description of the complex image.
Functional	Any images with navigational purpose	Video shortcut images, navigation bars in media presentations, images that respond to a click	Focus on the function, task, or sequence that the image is conveying. For example, with an image of an app icon, you would not describe what the icon itself looks like, but instead what it does.

 

Writing alt text is a subjective process, and it takes practice to find the balance between succinct and informative. By combining your expertise in your course’s topics with Ally’s analytics and coaching, you can enhance the accessibility of your Brightspace content, making it possible for all students in your course to experience the images. Start adding alt text today!

Got questions about accessibility? TLC has a passionate team of experts ready to help! Send your questions to teach@wit.edu.