Social Security Administration Guide: Alternate Text for Images

How this guide is organized

There are three main sections in this guide:

Section 1. Reference samples and guidance provides advice on what to do and what not to do for different interface elements

Section 2. Common mistakes are referenced from the Section 1 content to alert you to the things you should try to avoid.

Agency-specific information provides the ‘nuts-and-bolts’ of coding for images.

Key to symbols:

Information and guidance on what should be done for this element.

The right way to add alt-text in this situation.

The wrong way.

Take note!

About the sample images and text

The Social Security Administration’s Accessibility Resource Center (ARC) authored this guide. The star of the images is Pastel, the unofficial ASB mascot. Pastel has a few plans to change the way dog treats are distributed at the Agency.

A note for screen reader users of this guide: Each sample contains an image or images, and text that provides the context for the image. The text in the sample is rendered to look like a regular heading, but it is purposefully formatted as plain text. This is done to stop it from showing up as spurious headings when navigating the content of this guide using screen reader. Each sample is bounded by non-visible text stating “begin sample section” and “end sample section”.  Because this is an alt-text guide, the sample image remains undescribed and the actual alt-text is given in the guidance that immediately follows the sample. The authors decided that in this situation it would be useful for screen reader users to know where the image is located in relation to the example text. Therefore, in place of alt-text, we also added invisible text stating “sample image for this section.”