Complex Images

Complex images include images, graphs, charts, maps, etc. that cannot be described in less than 140 characters. When you use complex images, you need to describe all of the relevant information to students who are visually impaired by creating a text description. You do not need to include extraneous information, only the important information to understand the principle or learning objective of the image.

Ideal: Include all relevant information in the text so that the content can be fully understood without the image. In this case, the alt tag text would simply be a short description followed by “Diagram is described thoroughly in the text above.”

Ideal: Describe the pertinent information in the caption of the image. In this case, the alt tag text would be a short description followed by “Diagram is described thoroughly in caption below.”

Alternative: If you can not sufficiently describe the image in 140 characters, or describe it in the text, you will need to create a separate document describing the image. You will still need to include an alt tag that refers students to the text description. The text description can be in the form of text, tables or lists. 

The code for a complex image is

<img alt="Graph of xyz. See link to text description below or fully described in paragraph above (below)" src="image2.jpg">

A good text description should be:

• concise
• logical
• descriptive
• pertinent to the purpose of the page