Image Description

Top 5 Resources to help you write better Image Descriptions

5 resources to write image descriptions

80% of our learning comes from seeing and at 247 Accessible Documents, we believe image description is a basic requirement of making documents accessible. Without alternate text or image descriptions people with disabilities would not have the same access to images as you and me.

In a blog post by my colleague Leander Rodrigues, he has shared 5 tips for writing effective Alternate Text. In this blog, I would like to share 5 important resources which will help you write meaningful alternate text for your images.

  1. Diagram Center: The image description guidelines were developed by the Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media at WGBH (NCAM) in conjunction with the DIAGRAM Center (Digital Image And Graphic Resources for Accessible Materials) at Benetech. The reference document is broken into two main sections. The first section details best practices concerning style, language, formatting, and layout that apply to every type of image. The second section of this document presents best practices that are specific to particular image categories and classifications.
  2. Web Accessibility Tutorials by the W3C: This tutorial demonstrates how to provide appropriate text alternatives or image descriptions based on the purpose of the image. It provides an Alt Decision Tree to help you decide which category a particular image fits into and provide an image description depending on the usage, context and content of the image.
  3. TechSmith Blog: This blog by Ryan Knott explains in detail how to add alternate text to images and alternate text best practices. The blog discusses how to create alternative text for images for accessibility and SEO in a very simple and easy manner.
  4. Perkins school for the blind: The article covers important points describing the need for alternate text or image descriptions and important points to remember while writing an image description. The article also helps you understand the need for alternate text and image description and how it helps people with visual impairment.
  5. University of Minnesota: It states that alternate text should answer the question: What is the content conveyed by the image? It covers adding image descriptions in Moodle, Canvas, Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, Google Docs and Slides.

Need help with writing Image Descriptions?

At 247 Accessible Documents, we have a team of content writers who specialize in writing image descriptions. We go beyond an automated caption, we write descriptions to provide a complete picture to the person with disability that the image is communicating. Connect with us at for any support in writing image descriptions.

By Ramya Venkitesh
