Using images in your digital documents can help readers understand complex material, illustrate examples and generally break up continuous text. There are a few things to keep in mind when using images in your document.

A number of readers may not be able to see your images because they may be:

1. Blind or low-vision readers.
   
   
2. Users who disable graphics within a browser.
   
   
3. Users with low bandwidth (non-broadband users).
   
   
4. Users with a learning disability.

 

A. Reduce image size

If you wish to use a large image in a Word, PowerPoint or other document, you may need to resize it. Be careful doing this in Moodle or inside a Word or PowerPoint document, you can 'resize' the way the image looks but the image size itself is not reduced. Images that are not resized appropriately can bloat the size of a document making that file unnecessarily large and difficult to download and store.

 

B. Treat images separately

Images need to be treated as distinct from the documents in which they are used. Use an image editing application such as Photoshop Elements or perhaps the software that came bundled with a digital camera to genuinely reduce the size of the image before importing the image into a Word or PowerPoint file. Photoshop (or the more affordable Photoshop Elements) has a Save for Web feature which reduces the size of an image very effectively.

 

C. Remember those who cannot see

Images are of great benefit to many readers, but visual material is of limited use to blind or low-vision users. It is a good idea to include alt-text. This text can be read by screenreaders or can be seen if a user hovers a cursor over the image. Alt-text is useful for indicating to users whether an image is decorative or important. If the image is important, then alt-text can help blind or low-vision users understand what is in the image.