Automatic Suggestions for Alt-Text in Word & PowerPoint

If you have a blog or website, you’ve probably been made aware of the importance of metadata for search engine optimization (SEO). Well, metadata is equally important within enterprise applications, such as your intranet (which is probably SharePoint). One place that people tend to forget to add their metadata is around images — and an important part of image metadata is the alt-text. Not only does alt-text allow you to add natural language and keywords to your visualizations, but it can help power other important usability features within the enterprise. Alt-text can be read by screen readers, and helps people who are blind or who have low vision understand what images and other objects are in a document.

You can, of course, manually add alt-text to objects, such as pictures, clip art, charts, tables, shapes, SmartArt, embedded objects, and audio or video objects. However, within the latest versions of Microsoft word and PowerPoint, you now have the ability to Turning this feature on can therefore improve the search experience of your environment. The suggestions are powered via the Office 365 artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, which are powering many of the coolest features coming to O365 these days. It’s all about the AI, people.

I originally shared this tip in the December 2018 Productivity Tips webinar, which you can find in the blog and on the CollabTalk YouTube channel, or jump to the video clip here.

You can check out this great productivity tip over on TekkiGurus!

Christian Buckley

Christian is a Microsoft Regional Director and M365 Apps & Services MVP, and an award-winning product marketer and technology evangelist, based in Silicon Slopes (Lehi), Utah. He is the Director of North American Partner Management for leading ISV Rencore (https://rencore.com/), leads content strategy for TekkiGurus, and is an advisor for both revealit.TV and WellnessWits. He hosts the monthly #CollabTalk TweetJam, the weekly #CollabTalk Podcast, and the Microsoft 365 Ask-Me-Anything (#M365AMA) series.