Alt text for Ai or eps files

[Josephine@Redtail]

Hi. I am creating an accessible document in InDesign and I have added alt text to the photos and figures. The Alt text shows on the photos when I hover over them when I export it into Acrobat but not the ai files. They are tagged as Figures in Indesign. How can I make the figure alt text appear? Thanks, JO.

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com · Accepted solution]

Josephine@Redtail , Hovering over a graphic in a PDF to view the Alt-text is not the way to check the file. It's dicey whether the Alt-text will pop-up or not. Sometimes it will, sometimes it won't, so don't trust that method to check your PDF file.

Instead, we teach our clients/students these 2 methods to check the Alt-text:
 

1. From Acrobat's Accessibility tool panel (right side), select Set Alt-Text. A dialogue box will appear that allows you to cycle through all of the tagged graphics <Figure> in the document, view their existing Alt-text, edit it, add it to graphics where it's missing, or set the graphics to Artifact (decorative).
    
   Alt-Text in the Accessibility tools panel.
    
2. The second method is to right-click on each <Figure> tag in the Tag tree, select Properties, and check the Alt-text there.
    
   Check <Figure>'s Alt-Text in its Properties.

Note: In the past, AI files sometimes have not retained their Alt-text or have had other accessibility problems when the PDF is exported from InDesign. But I haven't seen that problem in a while.

Hope this helps.

[Josephine@Redtail]

Thank you. That is what I do already, but I thought Adobe would have fixed
this issue by now.


Regards, JO.



*Josephine EynaudM* 0418 939 469

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

It's not Adobe's error to fix!

It's the browsers and other software that process the PDF that choose how to handle Alt-text — and yes, Adobe Reader and Acrobat shouldn't pop up the Alt-text.

When first developed in the 1990s, Alt-Text was never intended to "pop up." It was intended to be hidden and "seen" only by those assistive technologies that need it, such as screen readers that voice it.

We now have 25+ years' worth of sloppy, inconsistent handling of Alt-text by the entire industry. Hence, some times you see it and some times you don't.