Situation

The company I was working for was publishing a ton of educational content and trying to ensure accessibility (WCAG) alignment. As part of that initiative, we determined that if the designers uploaded an image into a product, they should write an ALT tag for it. But if the image was text-dense or required an Aria tag, a member of the editorial/content management team to help them craft the ALT text. The designers were a little nervous about writing tags, though, and wanted some guidelines so they could make good choices about what type of tag to use where.

Task and Actions

We needed to define when we as an organization were going to use what kind of tag. We also needed a quick guide for the designers to help them determine if they could generate the tag, or if they needed help.

I wrote these ALT tag (or ALT attribute) guidelines so the rules were explained in a place that was easy for them to access.

I created a decision tree and longform document, but in order to do that, first I made a flowchart to get my own head around the rules. I never intended to include the flowchart, but when the designers saw it, they asked me to attach it. My intent was to build this into a wiki, but I was unable to prioritize that before my departure.

ALT Tag Guidelines PDF (contact me for password)

Results

Documentation about the organization’s use of alt tags was in one place, in different formats that appealed to users with different learning styles.