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. 

[Michael at UNCP]

It looks like the IPTC standard released in 2021 for image metadate includes fields for alt-text and extended descriptions. My experience has been that this is not widely supported by web platforms.

Adobe products and Photo Mechanic support it; Adobe Bridge is legally free and supports it. Adobe Acrobat will add alt-text to images embeded in the PDF for accessibility but I don't see the ability to add alt-text for the PDF itself, which makes sense.  IrfanView can read but not edit. Microsoft Photo doesn't support much metadata at all. 

Microsoft Word does read the Alt-text field depending on how you place the image. When I insert an image with alt-tex metadata and right click to see the image alt-text, the field has the correct metadata. If I use the clipboard to copy-paste an image, the alt-text does not transfer with the copy-paste. When inserting, I believe the user needs to right-click and "approve" the embeded alt-text.

https://iptc.org/news/iptc-announces-new-properties-in-photo-metadata-to-make-images-more-accessible...
https://www.scribely.com/post/one-giant-leap-for-accessibility-meet-the-new-photo-metadata-standards