Adding Alternative Text to Images in Canvas

Adding alternative text (alt text) to your images is important to making them accessible for everyone. Alt text provides a description of an image for someone who is blind or has low vision, which is read to them by a screen reader. It is also the text that pops up if an image on a website does not load correctly.

Remember to keep these principles in mind when writing alternative text:

  • Be concise but descriptive. If an image contains text, the text should be included in the alternative text.
  • Focus on the context that is relevant to the course. For example, it may be important to describe certain plants and their characteristics in a flower bed in a course about horticulture. But that same image for a landscape architecture course may be focused on the design and features of the flower bed, so the alternative text would describe this instead. 
  • Avoid using phrases such as “image of” or “picture of” because screen readers will already indicate it is an image. 
  • Always end alt text with punctuation so a screen reader will pause after reading it.

Instructions:

Every image added to a Canvas page should have alt text added to it. You can add alt text to an image after you insert it in your Canvas page. First, select the image. Then select the pop-up that appears labeled “Image Options.” A menu on the right-hand side of the page will appear where you can input alt text. After putting in your text, make sure you click “Done” at the bottom of the menu so it saves. 

The Image Options menu on a Canvas page, showing a field to add alt text.

Sometimes, an image may simply be an embellishment or fancy line, and has no information that is critical or relevant to the page. For these cases, rather than adding alt text, you can simply mark an image as decorative. This option is available in the same “Image Options” menu where you would add alt text. Below the text box for alt text is a checkbox labeled “Decorative Image.” Selecting this option tells a screen reader to skip over an image, so that the user’s experience is not interrupted by reading a detailed description that is irrelevant to the text. Only use this option if the image provides no content or context needed to understand the surrounding material.

It’s important to remember that some content would be more accessible as text, a table, or another media type rather than an image. For example, a screenshot of a course schedule would be difficult to add alternative text to, so it would be more accessible as a table.