Add an alt text in Acrobat

written by Stefan Brechbühl
last updated on June 9, 2021

An alt text (short for alternative text) describes a non-text element, such as a photo or graphic. The invisible text can be read and rendered by software, especially assistive technology (AT).

In the glossary you can learn more about what an alt text is and how it should look like. In this tutorial, we’ll look how to add an alt text in Acrobat.

Better in the source document #

As it is generally the case for tagging documents, the process of adding alt texts is better done in the source document. The reason for this is that all work in Acrobat must be repeated when the PDF is created again.

The following solutions assume that the images have already been tagged. If you need more information about this, have a look at the following articles:

• Defining PDF tags in Word
• Defining PDF tags in InDesign
• Create and modify PDF tags in Acrobat

Solution 1 #

1. Open the navigation pane “Tags”.
2. Navigate to the affected <Figure> tag.
3. Right click on this tag and select “Properties”.
4. Add the alt text in the tab “Tag” and the column “Alternate text”.

Solution 2 #

1. Click on “Reading Order” within the “Accessibility” tools.
2. A new window “Reading Order” opens and the contents are displayed in different grey areas.
3. Right-click on the grey area in which your image is located.
4. Select “Edit Alternate Text” and write your alt text into the newly opened “Alternate Text” window.