Adding alternative text

When creating a Google Slides presentation, it is always a good idea (and sometimes legally required) to make it as accessible as possible. There are several ways to do this, including:

using tables
working with high contrast colors
using informative link text
using numbered and bulleted lists
incorporating slide numbers
and using automatic captions.

For more information about these things, visit Google's "Make your document or presentation more accessible" page.

Alternative text is used by a screen reader to describe an image to a user who may have a visual impariment. Without alternative text, a screen reader would simply read, "image" when encountering a graphic. Alternative text will help users know what the image is and how it fits in the text and should be added for images, photos, drawings, and other types of images.

Copying the practice presentation

If you are beginning this course at this point, you will need to copy the presentation to your Google Drive.

NOTE: If you have been working through the course, your file should be up to date and you will not need to copy the practice presentation. You can move ahead to Adding alt text.

To begin copying the practice presentation in a new browser window,

Right-click Copy practice presentation, Click Open link in new window

The file begins to open in a new window of the web browser. Before the presentation will open and can be edited, we need to make a copy of it.

Move to the new browser window.
To copy the presentation file, in the browser window,

Click

A copy of the file is now open and, by default, is saved in your Google Drive. The filename now has the words "Copy of" at the beginning.

Adding alt text

In this lesson, we will see how to add alternative text to the image of the Sample Gates.

To open the Alt Text dialog box,
Right-click the Sample Gates image, Click Alt Text

The Alt Text dialog box opens. From here, we can add a title and a description to this image. When adding alt text, it is important to describe the image accurately and to give the user all of the important information about the image and how it relates to the content of the presentation.

To add a title to the Sample Gates image, type:
Sample Gates Tab
To add a description, type:
An image of the famous Sample Gates at the Indiana University Bloomington campus.
To accept the title and description,
Click

The dialog box closes and you are returned to the slide.

Adding alternative text

Copying the practice presentation

Step 1: Copy the practice presentation.

Adding alt text

Step 1. Open the Alt Text dialog box.

Step 2. Add a Title and a Description.