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I joined the SAP Community team over 15 years ago and I have always experienced the SAP Community as a place that aims to create a supportive and inclusive environment. Developers, customers, partners, and others freely collaborate and support and engage with each other. This collaboration is also possible thanks to established guidelines, which promote several key behaviors.
Below are just a few guidelines from the SAP Community rules of engagement:
- Share knowledge and experience
- Show gratitude when others share their knowledge and contribute
- Be respectful and professional during all community interactions
With that said, Digital accessibility is equally important to ensure that everyone can fully participate in the SAP Community platform.
Digital Accessibility and the European Accessibility Act
Accessibility became especially significant this year with the upcoming European Accessibility Act. This directive will unify accessibility requirements across all European member states for digital services, including online platforms like SAP Community. Taking effect June 28, 2025, it emphasizes making content accessible to persons with disabilities, which is why our team is encouraging the use of the caption feature in the SAP Community platform to support alternative text for screen readers.
Continue reading to learn about:
- Understanding Alternative Text (Alt Text): What it is and why it matters for accessibility
- Creating Effective Alt Text: Best practices and examples
- Using Captions to Support Alt-Text Functionality in SAP Community: How to add captions that work with screen readers
Understanding Alternative Text
Alt text is a short description of what appears in an image on a website. It describes the image’s content and its function or purpose within the context. While alt text doesn’t normally appear on screen for most viewers, it’s essential for people using screen readers—tools that convert written text to speech. Alt text is also helpful when images don’t load properly, as the description will appear instead of the image.
Creating Effective Alt Text
Best Practices for Writing Alt Text:
- Be specific but concise - Describe the image clearly while keeping the text brief (up to two sentences)
- Use keywords, but avoid keyword stuffing
- Don't use images as a replacement for text
- Avoid duplicating text that already exists in the document or website
- Avoid phrases like “image of” or “picture of,” but mention if it’s a logo, illustration, painting, or cartoon
Why These Practices Matter: Screen Readers and Alt Text
Screen readers are software applications that transform written text into speech, enabling people with visual disabilities to access digital content. While screen readers can automatically read text, they cannot understand images without help. This is why alt text is so important—it provides the description that screen readers need to tell users what’s in an image. When encountering an image, a screen reader will announce “image” and then read the alt text.
Examples of Alt Text
- Good: A Kitten.
- Better: A Kitten playing.
- Best: A grey kitten with black stripes playing with a colorful toy feather.
- Good: A horse.
- Better: A horse running.
- Best: A brown horse running on green grass alongside a wooden fence.
These examples demonstrate how adding specific details creates more meaningful descriptions while keeping them concise. The level of detail you choose should depend on the image’s purpose in your content. Images that deliver key information or serve a specific function may require more descriptive alt text that captures their significance while maintaining brevity.
Using Captions to Support Alt-Text Functionality in SAP Community
The SAP Community platform uses the caption feature to support alt-text functionality. This feature encourages better image descriptions and benefits all users. Adding a caption to an image ensures it is visible below the image for all viewers and read by screen readers as alt text in the HTML code.
This is how the UI looks when you add an image, and the arrow shows where you would add the caption:
Here’s how the caption appears in the post:
And this is how that same caption appears in the alt text attribute in the HTML code:
Step-by-Step: Adding Image Captions in SAP Community
Below is a step-by-step guide on how to add captions to images in the SAP Community platform. The example shows the blog post creation interface, but it’s relevant for all content creation scenarios in SAP Community.
- Accessing content creation interface
- Go to community.sap.com
- Click on a category (for example CRM and Customer experience)
- Click on “Create a Post”:
- Click on “Choose a board”:
- Click on “Show all”:
- Select the board where you would like to post your content:
2. Positioning your image
- Position your cursor where you want the image to appear
- From the formatting toolbar at the top of the editor, select the Camera icon (labeled “Insert Photos” in the tooltip)
- This will open the choose file dialog window
Position your cursor where you want to place the image and click on the insert images button (Camera icon)
3.Selecting image file
- Click on “Choose Files”:
- Select the image you want to use and click “Open”:
4.Adding caption:
After uploading, you'll see a field for entering the caption:
- Now Put the cursor in white space below the image
- Enter the text according to the best practices shared above
- Follow the best practices discussed earlier.
- Click “Done”
- Click “Post”:
Once published, this is how your image will appear with the caption below it:
Creating a Community Where Everyone Belongs
Now that you’ve learned how to add captions to images in the SAP Community platform, I encourage you to make this a regular practice whenever you share content. By taking this simple step, you’re helping make our community more welcoming, inclusive, and accessible for everyone.
Resources
Check out these resources if you’d like to learn more about accessibility and alt-text best practices:
- Write helpful Alt Text to describe images (Harvard University)
- Alt text for informative images (Siteimprove)
- Step-by-Step guide: Adding Image Captions in SAP Community (SAP Community). It's similar to the steps shared in this blog post but please subscribe to the guide to be updated when it's enhanced.
Please be sure to follow the Accessibility tag and visit the SAP Community topic page for Accessibility to stay updated on accessibility-relevant content.
Before closing, I would like to thank @KimberlyMcGee for her great insights while writing this blog post.
Thank you for joining the efforts in making the SAP Community more accessible. Please feel free to raise any questions in the comments section below.
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