Thank you to everyone that attended “Writing for Accessible Learning: ALT Text, Captions, and Beyond!” at this year’s Accessibility Summer Camp! I had a blast presenting this session. I heard there were over 100 of you in the audience at one point!

This session equips instructional writers with practical skills to make materials accessible for all. Dive into clear language practices and free tools for readability checks. Craft engaging captions, transcripts, and ALT text for learners with disabilities. Leave empowered to write inclusively, boost engagement, and achieve better learning outcomes!

Session Description and Objectives

Can everyone read your content? You might be surprised. A significant number of your readers may experience neurodivergence, disability, or other conditions that prevent them from interacting with your written content. Learn how to write with accessibility and inclusion in mind, including strategies for readability, captions, transcripts, and more – with resources and checklists to get to work right away.

In this session, you will learn to:

• Edit writing for readability and clarity
• Write quality captions, transcripts, and audio descriptions for audio/visual content
• Write quality ALT text for images

Writing for Accessible Learning Session Slides

Mentimeter provided a great platform for audience participation, as usual!

Looking for the final slides with audience responses? Download them here.

Session Resources

Readability and Language Tools

• Hemingway App
• Readable
• Federal Plain Language Guidelines
• WCAG: Readable

Other Accessible Writing Resources

• AI ALT Text Generator (use with caution and always double-check!)
• AWS Amazon Transcribe
• YouTube Automatic Captioning

Accessible Writing Series

Did you miss the series of posts on Writing for Accessibility I’ve had on the blog lately? Check them out here:

• Writing ALT Text for Accessibility
• Writing for Readability
• Writing Captions, Transcripts, and Audio Descriptions
• Writing Bonus! Accessible Emoji Use
• More on Accessible Writing: Fancy Fonts

Writing for Accessible Learning Session Recording

The recording is now available from the Accessibility Summer Camp website!

Visit this link to watch my session.

Did you find the session informative? I’d love to hear from you! 

The post Recap: Writing for Accessible Learning appeared first on Inclusive Pixelation.

Why didn’t I think of this sooner? I’ve been using Fiverr to find awesome freelancers for various tasks for my own business, so I thought I may as well set up shop there too! I have some Fiverr gigs available for accessibility-related services at very reasonable rates. Visit the links below if you’d like to hire me for some quick ALT text writing or caption and transcript editing!

ALT Text for Images

Caption and Transcript Editing

Once I’ve got the hang of the platform, I’m planning to offer more of my services in the future, like website accessibility testing, PDF accessibility remediation, and more.

I’m also on Upwork – if you have accessibility projects on that platform, I’d love to hear from you. In the meantime, contact me if you’re looking for other accessibility services!

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Welcome to this deeper-dive series of blog posts! I’ll be digging in to some accessibility topics that relate to my presentations on accessibility, with the goal of providing you with information and resources to make your workplace more accessible. The first post in this series is on Writing ALT Text for Accessibility.

What is ALT Text?

It’s a specific property that can be set on an image for use by assistive technology – whether that image is on a website or Content Management System (CMS), a document, an eLearning module, and more. ALT text, or alternative text, describes the meaning of the image in context so that users with limited or no vision can understand the information being shared.

ALT text has other uses as well, such as for slow bandwidth connections and search engine optimization. If an image fails to load over a slow connection, ALT text will display on a page instead, and search engines use image ALT text to better understand the content on the page.

Today we’re going to focus on writing ALT text for our images in any online setting.

What Makes Good ALT Text?

Great ALT text conveys both meaning and context – what is happening in the image itself, and how that relates to the rest of the content on the page. Don’t stuff your ALT text with keywords, thinking it will improve your search engine rankings. You’ll actually rank better with genuine, descriptive ALT text that naturally includes relevant keywords.

Good ALT text is shorter than a Tweet – 250 characters or less is a best practice. That’s not to say ALT text can’t be great with fewer or more words! Don’t include the words “picture of” or “image of” – a screen reader will do this for the user already. Also, avoid including image credits (such as an illustrator or photographer) in the ALT text – the appropriate place for this information is in an image caption.

Subjective or Objective? You’ll see advice going both directions, but in my personal opinion, if a subjective description better conveys the meaning of the image for the user, write it that way! You are the author of your website or document, and you chose the image for a particular reason, to convey a specific meaning. Don’t let that meaning slip away from an assistive technology user just because you are trying to describe the image as objectively as possible.

When can I skip ALT text? When the image is purely decorative and has no other meaning or context, that image does not require ALT text. Additionally, the user experience is often better when you skip ALT text on decorations. Imagine a screen reader user trying to learn from an eLearning module that has ALT text on decorative images, as well as meaningful ones – it would be possible to lose the important information in the clutter of ALT text.

How Can I Practice?

This is one of my favorite interactive activities during a presentation – showing an image and letting the audience practice writing the ALT text. ALT text improves as you get more input from more viewers of the image. Everyone will see or interpret something different from an image, and you can practice writing better ALT text in the same way, by getting additional opinions. What did you miss in your description that someone else saw? Is that additional information important to understand the image or its context?

Wait, can’t this be done automatically? Not quite! Although technology, especially generative AI language models like ChatGPT, is getting better at recognizing what an image depicts, algorithms alone cannot understand what an image means within the context of the overall content. Use AI to practice and get ideas for ALT text improvement, but never rely fully on automated tools without double-checking the output.

I Need a Checklist!

Click the checklist image below to download a PDF version.

Sources and Further Reading:

• Alternative Text
• What is Alt Text and How to Write It
• How to Design Great Alt Text: An Introduction

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