What’s Alt Text?

Hey students! Hope ya had a good Thanksgiving, this week we’re gonna come back from break with a light, easy topic: Alt Text.
So, first off,

What is alt text?

In this context, alt text is a little bit of text attached to an image. If used correctly, it will describe, in brief, what the image is.

Why is it important?

For people who have vision impairments, they need to use a screen reader in order to access the internet. This is a software, that, well, goes through a web page and reads it off to them. Sounds simple, but think of how complicated some documents can be: you can have figures, animations, pictures. For a lot of web-pages, these are just decorative and can be ignored. However many documents might have an image that it’s at least useful to understand is there in order to properly understand the text. Alt text is therefore a brief description of the image in question that a screen reader can pick up, explaining to the user what the image is.

How do I edit it?

Well, that very much depends on the platform you’re using. For the sake of this post, we’ll only go over Microsoft Office Products, Adobe Acrobat, and This Website.

Microsoft Office Products

The Good News:
It’s very easy to access and edit alt text with Microsoft Word. All you need to do is right-click on the image, and click on “View Alt Text” on the drop-down menu.

An image of a Microsoft Word document

From there, you’ll get this sidebar menu:

A screenshot of the alt text editing toolbar

You can edit the alt text in that little box. Apparently Microsoft Word will also be able to auto-generate alt text for you in some cases, though this was not one of them. (And it is the unofficial stance of the Help Desk that you should not rely on AI to write for you!)

The Better News:
PowerPoint is the same! Exact same UI and everything. This was expected, but it was worth double-checking and noting it here.

Adobe Acrobat

PDFs are notoriously difficult to work with regarding accessibility. Luckily, Adobe Acrobat has a whole suite of tools that you can access using the Toolbar on the left.

A screenshot of the Adobe Acrobat toolbar

(Unfortunately, the red box is supplied by the Help Desk, you’ll need to bring your own)

From there, you’ll want to click on “Add alternate text” (simple enough, to be honest).

A screenshot of the Accessibility toolbar

Now, from here it might get a little intense. It will ask your permission to scan the document and detect all figures to display their alternative text. From there, you’ll move through the figures one-by-one to view their alt text and edit it to your liking. It certainly can take a long time, which is why it’s probably good to make sure you have all your alt text sorted when you’re working in Microsoft before formatting it to a PDF.

This Website

Now, I know it probably seems kind of pointless to go over how to edit alt text on a website that most of you will probably never use. So why would we do this? Well, this website is actually a great case study in a platform that has no in-built tool to edit alt text (something I learned the hard way when making our last post). To edit it, we would actually need to edit is as an HTML file. Yes, that means Coding!

So, if you click on an image here, you can access its HTML by clicking on the three dots on the far-right of a toolbar that appears, like so:

A screenshot showing this website's image-editing toolbar

From here, you’ll be given a dropdown that lets you select “Edit as HTML”. Once you do so, it will replace the image with this line of code:

See where alt is highlighted? Well from there, you can just type your alt text within those quotation marks! Easy as that!
Now, different platforms may have different means of accessing a photo’s HTML code, but once there it should all be more or less the same. That leaves only one last question I feel should be answered…

What Makes Good Alt Text?

What makes good alt text is, it turns out, complicated. I fully wanted to do a how-to within the scope of this article, but a proper overview on good alt text would be an article of its own. So I’m going to outsource it to this website. It’s a good read, and not particularly long, but it is about as long as what I have already written and in all honesty I expect all my readers are at least as busy as I am.

Till next time!

Accessibility Checkers

Hey folks! Long time no post! We’ve been really busy at the Help Desk with doing accessibility checks these last few weeks in preparation for changes to ADA Title II. What is ADA Title II, you may ask? Well, here is a quick run-down of ADA Title II changes if you want more details, but in short: The University has to make all of digital materials accessible to disabled persons. In a web format, much of this takes the form of making sure that everything is formatted properly so a screen reader can intelligibly read it to a user.

There are a lot of things to consider, and while they’re pretty intuitive once you understand how a screen reader works, it’s a bit out of the scope of this blog post to go over all of the details, what we will do today is show you how to use accessibility checkers!

What is an Accessibility Checker?

It’s a program included in an application that runs a quick AI-driven check for accessibility concerns. They are easy to find and easier to use, but it should be noted that like everything automated, a human should double-check manually. Certain things just can’t be picked up by a machine. For example: Alt Text! (to be explained later)

How do I use it?

We’ll only go over accessibility checks for Microsoft products today. There are programs in Adobe Acrobat Reader for PDFs, but PDFs are a nightmare to check anyways, so we’re just not going to worry about that now.

Where do I find it?
The Microsoft Toolbar where you can find an Accessibility Check

So, for both PowerPoint and Word the Accessibility Check can be found under Review. Pretty straightforward, all things considered. Once you click on it, you’ll have an Accessibility Check bar show up on the righthand side of your screen. It will show you what accessibility concerns it’s found and, perhaps best of all, will give you a brief description of just why it’s a problem! You can keep it running while you work and dismiss the sidebar at any time to check later. It’s a great tool to not only check accessibility in general, but also to educate yourself about it!

That’s all for this week. Accessibility is a huge task that’s quickly become the theme of our semester here, so expect more of these posts as a sort of series in the near future!

What’s the Deal with SSO?

SSO (Single Sign-On) is a feature in Zoom that allows you to sign in with the credentials of your company or organization. For our purposes, this means you’ll need to use SSO for most Zoom calls hosted through the University, seeing as a lot of these calls have security measures in place to prevent non-authorized users from joining.

Using SSO is really easy, just people don’t always know where exactly to start. First off, navigate to the sign-in page of Zoom.

Click on the little key there in the bottom-left (labeled for your convenience) and it should take you here:

For company domain, you’ll simply put “illinois” and hit continue! This is the part that seems to trip people up. But after this you should find this next part pretty familiar:

So, just log in with your University credentials and you’re golden!

Aaaand that’s all she wrote! It’s a little confusing, and the extra steps can be frustrating, but the security measures are very necessary (we at the Help Desk definitely have a story about what can happen if they’re not in place). So hopefully this guide helped, and until next week!

Media Space for Canvas Recordings

For professors at the iSchool, it’s common knowledge that they can record their lectures on Zoom for their students to look over later. There’s hardly a single class we as the Help Desk check in on that doesn’t have some notification warning us that we’re being recorded. Eerie, really…

But what is less well-known is how to use Media Space in order to edit Zoom recordings and embed them into Canvas posts.
We already have a few KnowledgeBase articles here and here on how to edit videos on Media Space but the basics to know is this:
Everyone’s already got a Media Space account. When you record a Zoom Lecture made through your Illinois account to the Cloud, a copy is made on your Media Space that will eventually be deleted after 30 days unless you either set up a private Media Space channel or embed it into Canvas.

Embedding into Canvas is incredibly easy, turns out! When creating posts on Canvas, there is a special icon specifically for Media Space content to be added! It looks like this:

Once you click on this, you can then select the video you want from the list that appears.

That’s about the gist of it! If you’d like more specific directions and help, those KnowledgeBase articles above should furnish you with the necessary information on how to easily edit your uploads through Media Space.

Till next week!

Tech Tip: Printing 2024

This semester at the Help Desk, students have been busy printing resumes and class readings. We’ve gotten a lot of questions about printing from our incoming students. Luckily, our printing process is easy and convenient. So we’ve decided to share a few FAQs about printing and our policies!

Where can we print?
Short answer: Right by our Help Desk location! There is a kiosk there connected to our printer Luna (though it can also be routed to other printers in 614). All you need to do is login with your NetID and access your files!


Long answer: Anywhere! PaperCut is a website all students have access to that lets them print from any printer on campus. It can be used to check your print balance, as well. One piece of advice, though: PaperCut is really easy to use but it’s connected to EVERY printer on campus. To not get overwhelmed, when selecting for a printer make sure you filter it to only iSchool printers!


Additionally, we have walkthroughs for setting up your computer directly to the printers without any intermediaries. There are different processes for Windows and Mac. This is a great choice if you’re frequently around the iSchool buildings and want more personal control over how you print your pages, since PaperCut makes a lot of formatting decisions for you. However, the process of setting it up can be rather lengthy. Luckily, Help Desk GAs are always willing to walk you through it if you visit us!

Who can print?:
Unfortunately, only iSchool students are allowed to print from our locations. If you are not an iSchool student, worry not! The library also has printing services for all students.

Do we have to pay?:
No! Well, yes. But good news, you already have! All students have a printing quota that is included as part of their tuition. Undergrads get $10 and grad students get $21. Faculty, staff, PhD students, and masters students with assistantships get unlimited printing (though it is tracked). Pages cost $0.10 whether printed in black & white or in color, and the only catch is if you go over quota, you’ll be charged $0.40 per page which will be billed to your university account.

That’s about it for the most frequently-asked-questions. Until next time, and happy printing!

Tech Tip: Graduation Resources

Image congratulating new UIUC graduates and sharing a link to resources they can access after graduating.

As finals wrap up and the fall semester comes to an end, some of you are getting ready to graduate. With graduation comes a bunch of important questions, including ones like: will I lose access to my university account? If so, when? How do I save files linked to my Outlook email? My Box account? My Canvas courses?

Never fear! The Help Desk has a Knowledge Base article all about how long you keep your access to university accounts, as well as information about how to save important files and emails. If you still have more questions about graduation and what login information and tech services you can access, please reach out to us! The Help Desk is happy to help answer your questions and concerns. You can contact us at 217-244-4903 or ischool-support@illinois.edu. You can also visit us in-person at 614 E Daniel Street. We’re located on the 4th floor, and will be open for the summer from 9am-5pm Monday through Friday.

Tech Tip: Zoom Timer

Tech Tip: Zoom Timer. Graphic advertising the new tool and its uses in Zoom meetings.

Zoom just updated, and the new update included a new feature: Zoom Timer! You can now set up a timer or stopwatch and use it during a Zoom meeting. Learn more about how to turn on and use the new timer feature in the linked Knowledge Base article.

Tech Tip: Printer Help

Tech Tip: Printer Help. Graphic warning iSchoolers that the printers are on the fritz. Includes the contact information for the Help Desk if you need additional support printing.

Bad news iSchoolers: our printers are, once again, on the fritz. Printing from your personal devices will be unreliable for the next few weeks. The Help Desk is here to provide some key tips to help printing go as smoothly as possible.

Over the next few weeks, we recommend either printing using Papercut or by using the computer kiosks near several printers around the iSchool.

Papercut is the printing portal used across the university. You can log into Papercut using your netID and password, then select a document to print through Papercut. It is important to note that Papercut automatically prints documents in black and white and double-sided, and you cannot change these settings in Papercut. If you need to print a document in another format, we recommend using one of the printer kiosks in the iSchool.

There are several computer kiosks available around the iSchool:

  • In the basement of 501 E. Daniels St., next to the printer Chip.
  • On the second floor of 501 E. Daniels St., next to the printer Optimus.
  • On the fourth floor of 614 E. Daniels St., next to the printer Luna and right across from the Help Desk.

You can also access a list of all iSchool printers and their locations in our KnowledgeBase.

To access the printer kiosks, log in with your netID and password. You should upload the document you want to print to your email or to a hard drive so it is easily accessible. Once you are logged in, you should be able to access the document and print it using whatever software you prefer. Using the kiosk does allow you to print in color and single-sided.

If you are still experiencing issues printing, never fear! The Help Desk is here to handle your printing issues. You can contact us at:

  • Email: ischool-support@illinois.edu
  • Phone: 217-244-4903 or 800-377-1892
  • or message us via our Tech Chat service.

Tech Tip: Course Registration

Tech Tip: course registration. Graphic reminding students registering for courses that the Help Desk can help them with registration issues.

Course registration has started! As you register, you may experience issues using the system or get frustrated by navigation issues. The Help Desk is here to help you resolve these issues and set you up for success in the coming semesters.

Here are several quick tips if you experience issues registering for courses:

  • Clear your cache and cookies. Sometimes that’s all you need to do to fix the registration system!
  • Check for holds on your account – you may need to resolve them before you can register.
  • Double-check your registration time.
  • If you experience an error registering for a course, double-check the course requirements. It might be the wrong section of a course, or you may need to meet certain pre-requisites before you can register.
  • Make sure you hit the “Submit” button to register for selected courses – otherwise, your registration will not be saved!

The registrar also has resources to help guide you through the registration process. It’s a great resource for a variety of questions about the registration process, changing the amount of credits you register for, and more!

Tech Tip: Webtools

Tech Tip: Webtools. Graphic is promoting the tool Webtools for creating short URLs and QR Codes.

Have you ever needed to share a link to an important website or document, but the link was way too long? Or have you needed to create a QR Code, but the sites you tried online tried to get you to pay to make one? Fortunately, UIUC has access to Webtools. Webtools has a number of different features, including “Short URLs” to create better named URLs and QR codes for websites. The Help Desk has a Knowledge Base article explaining how Webtool’s “Short URLs” feature works. It’s a great tool for sharing presentations and websites in a variety of different ways.