LibGuides: Accessibility and Disability Inclusion Resources: Captions and Alt Text

Captions

For Deaf and Hard of Hearing people captions are important to make sure they can participate fully and engage with videos, webinars, Zoom calls, etc.

For Zoom you need to have live captions and video turned on, as some Deaf and Hard of Hearing people use lip reading.

If recording a video, enable the audio transcript feature.

Alternative Text Resources

Alternative Text, or Alt text, describes the meaning and context of images, graphs, figures, and charts. Captions and alt text are different. Alt text is not visible on a website, but captions are visible. Alt text is read by screen readers so users who cannot see or have low vision understand the information that is visually conveyed by images, graphs, figures, and charts.

Image Alt Text tips
From Penn State University. Includes examples.
Writing effective ALT text
From University of Leicester. Includes examples and tips for what to do and not do when writing alt text for images.
Alternative Text
University of Minnesota resource on how-to of writing alt text for images and descriptions for graphs and charts.
Images Tutorial
From W3C Web Accessibility initiative. Images Tutorial on how to make text alternatives that describe the information or function represented by them. Includes help on informative, decorative, functional, and complex images with examples.
WebAIM Alternative text
From WebAIM (web accessibility in mind).
Includes information on alt text basics, advanced images, such as form image buttons, image maps, background images, and logos.