ALT Text

Every image needs to have an ALT text description. This needs to be more than just a caption like “Graph of the function \(f(x)\)”, but rather a few descriptive sentences that convey the meaning or content of the image, not just its appearance.

The details, of course, may also depend on what the image is used for. Images in homework assignments may need descriptions different from those used in lecture notes.

Example

See this page.

Here, the ALT text is given in a separate structural element (the “Long Text Description” dropdown), but there are other ways to integrate these in your document - for example, when using \includegraphics

Producing ALT Text

Ideally, you write a long description for each of your images yourself. This gives you the best control over accuracy and what information you would like to convey. But if you have a large number of images, this may not be practicable in the short run.

AI bots have gotten much better at producing image descriptions recently. You can upload your image in any format (pdf, png, jpg, etc.) and prompt it to produce a text descrition:

"Generate a long description of the image for accessibility."

In many cases, this will even work if your image is generated via code, for example using tkiz. In this case, paste the tikz code instead of the graphics file.

Important

Check AI-generated text for accuracy.