Under Community Review

Store alt text with each version/language of an image

With WCAG 2.0 and Section 508 compliance, each image must have alt text. To ease reuse and encourage consistency, this information should be stored with each image version/language, as language-level metadata. 

Colin Ferguson
  • Former Member
    Former Member

    There is a solution for chunking alt descriptions with an image in DITA without having to resort to using SDL metadata (I'm assuming that this request is asking for the alt text to be stored in SDL Properties metadata?). The solution is to put the description in the <alt> element in the <image> element:

    <image href="tip-ing.jpg" id="GUID-xyz789>

    <alt>Here's a Tip!</alt>

    </image>

    Store the image as a content chunk in a library file and then, in your concepts, tasks, etc., you reference the image element using @conref or @conkeyref.

    Example: <p>This is a paragraph with an image <image conref="GUID-abc123#GUID-abc123/GUID-xyz789/>.</p>

    Using this solution would be inline with the DITA standard and would not force proprietary SDL metadata to be used.