Strengthening Staff Capacity for Inclusive Communication Using Accessible Images

The project aims to enhance inclusivity within the Faculty of Social Sciences by building staff capacity to utilise accessible digital imagery. Alt text, or alternative text, provides textual descriptions for graphical digital content, boosting accessibility in documents, presentations, and websites. Benefits include computerised recognition, improved search engine optimisation, and support for accessibility tools like Blackboard Ally. Alt text allows content creators to offer additional contexts, details, or convey the intended message of an image, promoting inclusive communication to diverse audiences.

Images including maps, visual data representations, screenshots, and symbols are prevalently used to convey knowledge through teaching and research. In spite of its importance, understanding and implementing Alt text poses a challenge to practitioners, and it is not well understood how available tools can support them in its creation.