Graphical user interfaces for devices are commonly used to display images. Such images may represent interface icons or pictures. In order to provide fuller accessibility for the interface, alternative text may be provided for display in conjunction with an associated image or instead of the image. Such alternative text is commonly referred to as alt-text. Generally, such alternative text is arranged to provide a description of the associated image and thus provides an alternative means for communicating the image based content and options of the interface to a user.
A number of methods are used for providing the alternative text for an associated image. For example, the alternative text for an image in a hypertext mark-up language (HTML) web page is commonly specified in an “alt” field within the HTML specification of the image.
One problem is that alternative text is coded at the point of use of the image. This is a time consuming process. If the alternative text is associated with a given image file, the image file, or a reference to it, may be passed around a given program or between programs and thus may become separated from any associated alternative text.