Adding Alt Text to Images

Alternative text descriptions, often abbreviated as “alt text”, describe the content or purpose of an image so that users with visual disabilities can still understand the purpose of the image. Alt text can be very simple or quite complex, depending on the image and how it is being used.

Adding Alt Text to Images

Microsoft Word

After you have added an image to your document, right-click to open the contextual menu, and then choose “View Alt Text…” (towards the bottom of the menu).

A Word document with a selected image. The contextual menu is open and the View Alt Text item is marked.

The Alt Text pane will open to the right side of the document window. You can enter your alt text into the text box in this pane.

Word's Alt Text pane with text describing the image in the document: Doctor McCoy from the original Star Trek series, with a text caption that says, "You never forget your first doctor".

The “Mark as decorative” checkbox allows you to skip adding alt text for an image that does not actually convey any information, but is used only as a decorative element, such as clipart used as a section separator.

Automatically Generated Alt Text

Word tries to be helpful by automatically generating alt text for images that are added to documents. Unfortunately, this is a task at which Word is not very good. For example, in the screenshot used above, the sample image is a shot of DeForest Kelley as Dr. Leonard McCoy in the original Star Trek television show, with the caption, “You never forget your first doctor” (a combination Star Trek/Doctor Who joke). However, Word’s automatically generated alt text for this image is, “A person looking at the camera”. While technically correct, this alt text doesn’t convey the actual content of the image, and would be essentially useless for assistive technology users.

We recommend disabling the option entirely in the Accessibility pane of Word’s options, and ignoring the “Generate alt text for me” button in the alt text entry pane.

Word's accessibility options screen with the automatic alt text section highlighted with a red box, and the 'automatically generate alt text for me' box unchecked.

Google Docs

After you have added an image to your document, right-click to open the contextual menu, and then choose “Alt text…” (towards the bottom of the menu).

A Google Docs document with a selected image. The contextual menu is open and the Alt text item is marked with a red line.

The Alt Text section of the Image Options panel will open to the right side of the document window. You can enter your alt text into the text box in this pane.

The Google Docs Alt Text pane with text describing the image in the document: Doctor McCoy from the original Star Trek series, with a text caption that says, "You never forget your first doctor". The Advanced Options field is left blank.

The “Advanced options” title field allows you to add extra text that will appear when a user hovers their pointer over the image, usually known as a “tooltip”. This is an optional field, as tooltips may not be read by assistive technology, and should not include important information that isn’t included in the alt text.