Question

I am creating a web form that will do a 508 compliance check on word documents. I am looking through MSDN and other sites for getting the information I need from a file the user selects. The one thing I can’t find is how to find images, and check to see if they have alternative text. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!

Answer 1

Images inserted into 2007+ Word documents are Drawing objects. So you can traverse the XML for w:drawing members.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/documentformat.openxml.wordprocessing.drawing.aspx

The w:drawing member will have a child called w:inline which is a part of the Inline class.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/documentformat.openxml.drawing.wordprocessing.inline.aspx

The w:inline member will have a member called wd:docPr.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/documentformat.openxml.drawing.wordprocessing.docproperties.aspx

The wd:docPr member may have a field called title which houses the alternative text title and a field called descr which houses all the alternative text.

Example XML:

<w:drawing xmlns:w="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/wordprocessingml/2006/main">
    <wp:inline distT="0" distB="0" distL="0" distR="0" wp14:anchorId="357A850A" wp14:editId="384E9053" xmlns:wp14="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2010/wordprocessingDrawing" xmlns:wp="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/drawingml/2006/wordprocessingDrawing">
        <wp:extent cx="5943600" cy="4457700" />
        <wp:effectExtent l="0" t="0" r="0" b="0" />
        <wp:docPr id="1" name="Picture 1" descr="ALL TEXT HERE" title="ALT TEXT TITLE HERE"/>
        ...

I highly recommend you use the OpenXML Productivity Tool that comes with the OpenXML SDK.