Amending Alternative Image Text in Word
The Save As PDF command in MS Office 2007 allows you to create a PDF from a Microsoft Office document even if you haven’t got Adobe Acrobat installed. However, if the Office document contains images (and the images have been inserted using the Insert > Image command rather than copy and paste), the image in the PDF document will have "alt text" attached to it.
What is Alt Text?
The purpose of alt text (short for alternative text) is to provide a textual description of the image. This description will be displayed as a tooltip when a user hovers their mouse over the image. The description will also be "heard" by anyone using screen reading software.
By default, the filename is used for the alt text as shown in the screenshot above. If the filename is either meaningless (for example1.jpg) or not overly-descriptive, it is recommended that the alt text is amended.
Changing the Alt Text – 1
To change (or remove – although that is not recommended for the reasons already stated) the alt text for an image, right click the image and select Format Picture…
Changing the Alt Text – 2
Click the Alt Text tab, delete the existing text and type in the new text into the Alternative Text box.
Click OK to complete the process.
