topic Re: Wondering if it is possible the generation of ALT descriptions for SAS/GRAPH programmatically in SAS Programming

Wondering if it is possible the generation of ALT descriptions for SAS/GRAPH programmatically

ikeplus — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 23:35:39 GMT

Found and test an interesting Python library for generating alt text descriptions for plots made with Matplotlib.

The Library is Matplotalt https://matplotalt.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Wondering if there is something similar for SAS/GRAPH

Example using the heuristic method (no AI involved)

the generated ALT text is: A bar chart titled 'world's biggest coffee drinkers (per capita)'. Average consumption (kg) is plotted on the x-axis from 0 to 14 using a linear scale and country is plotted on the y-axis from netherlands to finland using a categorical scale. (and the datatable in text, I am not posting here because format got damaged but providing screenshot)

I have a google colab with this example. if you want to read the python code.

https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1gG5rcLR8xcpHzFrpIRP92d0zEtfSjpFu?usp=sharing

Re: Wondering if it is possible the generation of ALT descriptions for SAS/GRAPH programmatically

Ksharp — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 06:54:28 GMT

https://blogs.sas.com/content/graphicallyspeaking/2015/11/30/7180/
https://blogs.sas.com/content/graphicallyspeaking/2015/09/21/response-colors-and-thickness/

Re: Wondering if it is possible the generation of ALT descriptions for SAS/GRAPH programmatically

Quentin — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 13:16:19 GMT

@Ksharp the links your posted explain how to generate colorful graphs, but the question here is is there a way to automatically generate the ALT text that summarizes a graph (that would be displayed on hover, or for visually-impaired viewers with screen readers).

That's a pretty cool feature. I know SAS has done a lot of work on graphics accessibility, including translating graphs into audio representations: https://www.perkins.org/resource/sas-enables-visually-impaired-visualize-data/ . But I don't recall seeing anything that would automatically generate an alt-text summary of a graph.

Re: Wondering if it is possible the generation of ALT descriptions for SAS/GRAPH programmatically

ikeplus — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 13:43:59 GMT

Thank you @Quentin , I will continue my search, for now my only possible solution is to upload via API the generated image file to an AI to get described the generated image with a WCGA compliant alt description. I will read more about SAS® Graphics Accelerator. have a beautiful day!

Re: Wondering if it is possible the generation of ALT descriptions for SAS/GRAPH programmatically

Quentin — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 13:54:10 GMT

Assuming you don't find a SAS solution, you might suggest this as a product enhancement:

https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Product-Suggestions/idb-p/product-suggestions

The LLM approach makes sense. I haven't tried SAS Viya Copilot, but I wonder if SAS could adapt it to generate alt-text from graph images (or I guess from the data used to generate the graph).