Mark Images as Decorative

Decorative images are images that do not convey any information. Think of a background image that simply serves an aesthetic purpose. In this case, you can mark the image as decorative so that screen readers will skip it. Otherwise, the screenreader will focus on and read out the element, confusing the screenreader users. The mistake is especially problematic when the slides contain many of these elements.

1. How to mark an image as decorative?

View Alt Text … → Go to the Alt Text panel → Mark as decorative

This is a screenshot of a PowerPoint slide and the Alt Text Panel. On the left, there is a PowerPoint slide with a few pictures from Pinterest. On the right is the "Alt Text" pane. In the pane, the "Mark as decorative" is selected.

In the example above, the Pinterest logo doesn’t convey important information, so let’s mark it as decorative.

2. Footers are easily overlooked.

In the example above, there’s also a template footer which specifies the date, instructor, course title, and URL. We advise to mark them as decorative on subsequent slides to prevent redundancy. This ensures that screen readers don’t repetitively read out the same information, thus saving the user’s time.