Embedding Alt Text in an Image File

[Matt SNW]

Can Alt Text somehow be embedded in an image and picked up by the app or software it is used in without having to manually enter the Alt Text in each application? Case in point for this approach: Embed in a brand logo or product imagery so it is consistently described and always Accessibile for Screen Readers. MS Office would be the primary destinations for the SVGs and PNGs.

Thank you!

[Monika Gause]

You could use the XMP metadata for that. File > File Info. InDesign can access those fields and you would have to investigate whether your apps can do that as well. There is a thread about it in this. forum but I can't find it right now.

[Matt SNW]

I was looking at that initially, but nothing obvious jumped out at me there. I will experiment a bit to see if the Office Suite can pick it up from some field in there. Thank you!

[Ton Frederiks]

Yes, I was thinking about the Description field in XMP metadata (in Illustrator File > File Info)

But I wonder if and how the Office apps can read and use them.

Here is an interesting article about adding alt text to image metadata:

https://throughmyeyesinclusivedesign.wordpress.com/2016/12/13/adding-alt-text-to-image-metadata/

[Matt SNW]

Thank you. Any and all this info is helpful as I navigate this new world (to me) of Accessibility. 

[JimSwift]

There is a plugin. Access-Aide, for the Sigil epub editor program. It adds items to the epub to meet accessibility guidelines. 

A new version of Access-Aide was released this week (May 2024). If an image metadata contains an image-description in either the ITPC alt-text-accessibility field (1st choice)  or the EXIF Image Description field, then the plugin will add that description to the alt="" tag for the image in the epub, provided that the alt="" is empty.