How to Fix Missing Alt Text in Storyline 360

Overview

Without alt text, a screen reader announces an image as just "image," or reads its filename aloud, both meaningless to the learner. On the flip side, if every decorative border and background shape gets read aloud too, the course becomes exhausting to listen to. The fix is the same either way: tell Storyline what the image actually is.

Step-by-step instructions

1. 1

   Right-click the image on your slide.

2. 2

   Choose Size and Position.

3. 3

   Open the Accessibility tab.

4. 4

   Ask yourself: does this image add information, or is it just decoration?

5. 5

   If it adds information, type a description of what it communicates, not what it looks like.

6. 6

   If it's purely decorative, check the box that marks it decorative so a screen reader skips it.

7. 7

   Repeat for every image, icon, and graphic on the slide.

Screenshots

Tips

• Write alt text the way you'd describe the image over the phone to someone who can't see it, specific enough to be useful, short enough to not be a paragraph.
• If you're describing a chart or graph, describe the takeaway, not just the chart type. "Bar chart showing a 20% increase in customer satisfaction" is far more useful than "bar chart."
• When in doubt about whether something is decorative, ask whether removing it would change what the learner understands. If not, it's decorative.

Common mistakes

• Leaving alt text blank, or using the filename as alt text, "quarterly-chart-final-v3.png" tells a screen reader user nothing.
• Writing alt text that just says "image" or "photo."
• Marking a genuinely informative image as decorative because it was faster than writing a real description.

Why it matters

People using a screen reader won't know what this image shows.