Appropriate Alternate Descriptions
Effective Descriptions and Complex Images
A picture can be worth a thousand words but we don't always have time or space for that level of detail as an alternate description. Depending on the content in the picture, you might need to provide an extended description in the main narrative text or provide it in a supplemental document.
Remember, you can describe images in MS Word with the Alternative Text tool from the "Format Picture" menu.
Consider strategies for describing the following content:
Sample Image 1
Here is the paragraph that accompanied the following image:
"This sequence of images from the Nasa Solar Dynamics Observatory shows the Sun from its surface to its upper atmosphere all taken at about the same time (Oct. 27, 2017). The first shows the surface of the sun in filtered white light; the other seven images were taken in different wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light. Note that each wavelength reveals somewhat different features. They are shown in order of temperature, from the first one at about 11,000 degrees Fahrenheit (6,000 degrees Celsius) on the surface, out to about 10 million degrees in the upper atmosphere.
Yes, the sun’s outer atmosphere is much, much hotter than the surface. Scientists are getting closer to solving the processes that generate this phenomenon."
Source: sdomission.tumblr.com
The above image requires a longer description that is appropriate for an alternate text description, so we can rely on the description of the image provided in the main text and use a shorter description for the image that connects the description in the main text as the full alternate text description.
For this image, I chose to use the following alternate description "several images of the sun representing different temperatures".
Context Matters
Sample Image 2
The following image might have several different descriptions, depending on the course it is being used in:
Image source: https://imgur.com/gallery/vejSyde
(In case you're wondering, the explanation for this image is: these are some of the faces a dog can make when it tries to eat a lemon...)
Title vs Description
For a long time, there have been issues with image descriptions and image titles being reliably relayed to the users of assistive technology when both the Title and the Description field are used when describing an image in MS Word.
While it appears that MS Word Online will present the description to some assistive technologies when both the Title and Description fields are used, the implementation is not always consistent across assistive technologies.
Bottom line: Always use the Description field from the Alternative Text tool when describing your images in MS Word, and describe your images appropriate to the context so your desired message is communicated.