If you want screen readers to describe graphical elements that illustrate important concepts in the document, you must provide the description. Figures and multimedia aren’t recognized or read by a screen reader unless you add alternate text to the tag properties.

The Alt text attribute lets you create alternate text that can be read in lieu of viewing an illustration. ActualText is similar to Alt text in that it appears in lieu of an image. The ActualText attribute lets you substitute an image that is part of a word, such as when a fancy image is used for a drop cap. In this example, the ActualText attribute allows the drop cap letter to be read as part of the word.

When you export to Adobe PDF, the Alt text and Actual Text attribute values are stored in the PDF file and can be viewed in Acrobat 6.0 and later. This alternate text information can then be used when the PDF file is saved from Acrobat as an HTML or XML file. For more information, see your Adobe Acrobat documentation.