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.
• If an image is decorative and does not have any meaning, you can mark the image as decorative.

Instructions:

Every image added to a Canvas page should have alt text added to it. You can add alt text into 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. 

It’s important to remember that some content would be more accessible as text, a table, or other 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.