[Irl-dean] MS-Word, images, and text alternatives...

[Eoin Campbell]

In Word 2000 and above, there is a facility to add alternate text.
Move your mouse over the image, right-click, and you should see
a "Format Picture..." menu item.
It opens a dialog box, and you can enter alternate text in the Web tab group.

If you don't see "Format Picture...", select "Picture Object>Open" instead,
and it opens the image in Words Picture editor. Right-click on the image
again, and this time you should see "Format Picture...".

When Adobe Acrobat 6.0 (I think) is used to convert a Word file directly to PDF, it
saves this alt text in the PDF file, if the appropriate options are set.

I'm not sure if the JAWS reader will read out the alternate text, either
from the PDF or Word file, though.



At 11:42 17/08/2005, you wrote:

>A quick technical query, just in case somebody out there has the
>instant answer!
>
>I am not a frequent MS-Word user (my primary platform is linux
>with OpenOffice).  I know that MS-Word has a standard facility to
>"export HTML".  I also know that the "HTML" produced is typically
>idiosyncratic (to put it politely) but that's not my immediate
>question. What I am wondering is whether there is a standard
>MS-Word mechanism (when editing a native doc file) for embedding
>alternative text for images, such than, when the standard MS-Word
>"export HTML" mechanism is used those alternatives appear as HTML
>alt attributes?
>
>If there is such a mechanism I'd appreciate a brief description
>of how to use it, or a pointer to some documentation of it. (I
>did try a little googling, but didn't find anything directly
>relevant.)
>
>Again, what I am asking here is solely about standard features of
>MS-Word itself - not any third-party add ons or external
>convertors etc.  And it relates to editing standard word format
>files (not using word to edit a HTML format file).
>

--
Eoin Campbell, Technical Director, XML Workshop Ltd.
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