[Athen] Alt text for instructions with screenshots

[Christine Robinson]

Hi all -

For our campus, I'm tasked with creating instructions for various elements in Office 365. Obviously, I want to make the instructions accessible - and I haven't dealt with this kind of thing before.

My instructions include steps such as (for example) "In the upper left corner of the Office 365 window, click the icon for the App Launcher," followed by a screenshot with the icon circled.

It seems like the alt text should not be a description of the screenshot, however. I suspect a screen reader user doesn't really care what the icon looks like. Since alt text is supposed to convey the same information that a sighted user would obtain from an image, it makes sense to me that the alt text should offer instructions on how to accomplish the same result using keyboard commands.

For example, if my text instructions say, "in the upper left corner, click the icon..." perhaps the alt text for the image should say something like, "Tab to the icon for the App Launcher." ???

So my questions for you all are:

1.       Is it correct that, in this case, alt text should provide instructions on how to navigate to the icon instead of a description of the image?

2.       Where can I find more instructions re. using Office 365 features via keyboard commands? I've searched on the Microsoft site but haven't succeeded in finding anything.

Thanks!

Christine Robinson | Technical Trainer/Writer | Center for Teaching Excellence
Georgia Gwinnett College | 1000 University Center Lane| Lawrenceville, GA 30043

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