Adding ALT text to audio shapes

Problem

If your're required to ensure that your presentations are ADA compliant, that will include adding ALT text to images, graphics and sounds that you've added to your slides.

You can do this manually (right-click the shape, choose the format option, then in the formatting pane, choose Alt text and add the text there). But this can become very tedious when you've got, for example, a narration sound file on every slide and you just need to add Alt text like "Click here to play the narration" to each of them.

Solution

Here's a quick fix. This VBA macro will add any text you like as ALT text to every sound file in a presentation:

Sub AddAltTextToAudio()
' This will add the same alt text to every audio object
' in the current presentation.
' You can make the alt text anything you wish.
' Just edit the sAltText= line below.

    Dim oSl As Slide
    Dim oSh As Shape
    Dim sAltText As String

    ' What should the alt text say?  Edit here if desired:
    sAltText = "Click here to play the narration"

    ' Look at each slide
    For Each oSl In ActivePresentation.Slides
        ' Look at each shape on each slide
        For Each oSh In oSl.Shapes
            ' Is it media object
            If oSh.Type = msoMedia Then
                ' Is the media object a SOUND?
                If oSh.MediaType = ppMediaTypeSound Then
                    ' It IS.  Add Alt text
                    oSh.AlternativeText = sAltText
                End If
            End If
        Next    ' shape
    Next    ' slide
End Sub

See How do I use VBA code in PowerPoint? to learn how to use this example code.

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