No custom alt text option available for images.

[Guest]

Attempting to set custom alternative text on images in indesign fails.

Select an image, context click the image, and select object export options.

No custom option is available for alt text at the next stage.

Where do users set alt text on images.

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @TonyTwoTimes,

I’m sorry to hear you’re having trouble setting custom alternative text for images in InDesign. 

Could you please let me know which version of InDesign you’re using and the details of your operating system? Also, if possible, could you provide a screen recording of the workflow where you encounter the issue? This will help us better understand what might be going wrong.

In the meantime, please confirm if in the "Object Export Options" dialog box, are you able to select Custom and enter your alternative text in the provided field (In "Alt Text" tab). 

If you don’t see the option for custom alt text, it might be due to a version issue or a setting that needs adjustment. Your version details and a screen recording will help us pinpoint the problem.

Looking forward to your response!

Thank you, 

Abhishek Rao

[Guest]

Pointless response. See the following community answer. You do not know what you are doing.

[James Gifford—NitroPress · Accepted solution]

I don't understand. What's wrong with the Alt Text entry pane you have selected?

ETA: I see it now. You are selecting the graphic object itself, and ID apparently does not allow alt text assignment at this level.

Select the graphics frame instead, which will be exported as a unit that contains/presents alt text. You will have all options available for that.

[Guest]

This is the answer, and while i must thank the responder for their helpful reply because i would never have deducted that a container was the problem here, i will also ask @adobe - who i can of course not tag in this infrastructure - why i would attempt to apply an action to an object that is not an image when ALT TEXT is to be applied to an image file, specifically?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

InDesign does not export graphics as an element of their own; all elements must be in a text or graphics frame, which becomes the overall container for all elements — an image, added graphic elements, etc. So it's to that (InDesign) element that alt text is assigned, so that it will apply to the entire exported/viewed object. This is no different from how, say, an image is handled in a web layout, with a formatting block that contains the image link, size and border info, class... and an alt= string. HTML does not "apply the alt string to the image" but bundles into into a single document element.

Which is exactly what ID does as well.

I suggest that (1) you don't know what you are doing understand InDesign's document structure well enough to grasp that a element like alt text has to "go somewhere" just as it does in a web page, and (2) being pointlessly rude isn't going to get you answers and help here very long. Rao's answer, like most given by the Adobe Employees who monitor these forums, was a request for general information that often leads to a useful answer. Most technical answers come from the forum users — this being a user-to-user forum, not an official support one — and we often have to start with just those questions to be able to advise posters who are on different platforms, OS versions, ID versions and such. The employees often jump in on such questions to give a quick initial response and, hopefully, get a followup post of that useful diagnostic info before another user has to do so.

Maybe keep that in mind next time you ask for help?

[Guest]

I do not do sarcasm. Adobe, as the monolithic structure that they are, should be able to provide a decent - or at least a workable - user experience.

They do not.

I will 'keep in mind' what i choose, as a senior web developer with 25 years of experience. You keep replying as you see fit, pal.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Well, replies won't be a further problem for you. And if you understand web structure, you shouldn't have gotten all confused over ID doing the operation in exactly the same way.

I'll again note that this is a user-to-user forum, with several centuries of combined experience on tap for assistance and problem-solving, from participants who are here and act voluntarily. It is not an official support chatline. If you think "Adobe" didn't do a good enough job with your question, please... feel free to seek help elsewhere.

Won't bother you further.

[Guest]

Further to your response:

Globalism, and the uselesness inherent to that concept and the practice thereof, is slowly eroding the usefulness of what were once useful and pragmatic answers to reasonably straightforward questions asked by people such as myself - who have elected, probably in error, to fund businesses - and make no mistake, this is a business first - such as this.

I do not have to beg for service delivery from a company to whom i am paying in excess of nine hundred pounds per annum. adobe can either do better, or go away. As myself and my organisation are currently preparing for.

Having been subjected to responses such as this and others like it when asking fairly straightforward questions around the basic functionality of what should be reasaonably understandable applications that have become vectors for internal bloat, it has become apparent that there is a pervading culture of superiority surrounding this 'software'.

Feel free to respond as you like. I will no longer be monitoring this message thread, and will be leaving this here for google to index upon search.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

You asked a straightforward question.

With one brief bobble, I gave you a straightforward and accurate technical answer., and within an hour or so of realtime. On my own time, not Adobe's.

And all you can do is b*tch about everything, because your massive experience wasn't enough to sort out a basic functional model of ID (all objects exist in containers, and objects and containers are managed somewhat separately, for excellent layout management reasons). I guess in all your years of web design you've never applied classes to, say, a <div> and other classes to what it contains, or noticed that alt-text isn't "applied to" an image file link.

Can't imagine why you get "responses such as this"... pal. Good luck with ID out there on your own.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

James, the OP proably is busy reading "How to Win Friends and Influence People" and doesn't have time for learning a complex program such as InDesign. Perhaps he needs the more expensive Creative Cloud version that come with an Osmosis feature to learn the software.