o Insert the image, then right-click and choose Size and Properties.
o In the Size and Properties dialog box, choose the Alt Text tab. Type in a
brief description with enough detail to explain the pictures. You don’t need
to say “image of” or “picture of” because the screen reader alerts the
reader that it is an image.
o Click Close.
End of Worksheet
Type End of Worksheet in the row immediately after the last row of your table.
Defining the Title Region – a Very Important Step
One final, advanced step is “defining the Title Region” which is a little bit of code so the screen
reader knows to repeat the row and column titles when reading the data.
How a screen reader reads a table: the default for a screen reader in English is to read starting
at the top, and going left to right. When it gets to the end of a line, it goes to the next line down
and reads, again, from left to right.
Now imagine a screen reader reading this table [example defining title region.xlsx]. Without
some help from you, the screen reader reads it like a book. After the title, it will read, “Type,
January, February, March, April, etc. Then it will go to the next line and read Sci Fi 4, 3, 3, 2, 5,
6, and so on. As sighted readers, we are constantly referring back to the row and column
headers to see what the numbers refer to. Visually impaired users need those references too.
What we need is for the screen reader to read this way:
o Sci Fi: January, 4;
o February, 3;
o March, 3;
o And so on.
In other words, the screen reader should repeat the column header each time before it reads
the value. Screen readers are smart enough to do that! We just have to tell them how our table
is set up and how to read it.
Here’s how to do it:
1. Before we begin, we need to know three things about our table:
o Is this the first (or only) table on this worksheet?
o What are the addresses of the top left and bottom right cells in your
table?
o Is this worksheet the first (or only) worksheet in this workbook?