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Re: client using title instead of alt on image.

for

From: Despain, Dallas
Date: Apr 2, 2010 1:45PM

Jukka, Andrew, and Dean

Thank you very much for your well thought out responses. I think I'll just take the "not reliable for all assistive technology" approach.

I am continually amazed at the incredible wealth of information and depth of knowledge of users of this list. Thank you!

Sincerely,

Dallas

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Simius Puer
Sent: Friday, April 02, 2010 4:28 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] client using title instead of alt on image.

As Jukka quite rightly points out, use of "title" isn't invalid (most HTML
tags can accept a title attribute) at all, but *not* using an "alt"
attribute is!

If you need a solid argument for using the "alt" attribute there it is -
valid code and all the niceness that goes with it:

- Just mention improved SEO and most clients are sold but there are other
reasons too
- For accessibility you can't guarantee that all past, present and future
AT software will accept the "title" attribute in lieu of the "alt"
one...using tags and attributes for their intended purpose should be a
standard practice for any decent HTML coder
- More likely to be fully cross-browser compatible

...if they are still not sold on why valid code is important suggest they
read: http://validator.w3.org/docs/why.html

Incidentally if the client uses a null alt="" the page will run through a
validator without any problems so you can't simply rely on that, although it
is a good start.

*Background*

Early versions of IE incorrectly displayed the alt-text on mouseover. Other
browsers were not following a trend - they simply applied the correct
behavior of the "alt" attribute in the HTML spec (or it could be the User
Agent Accessibility Guidelines UAAG - I forget which).

As IE8 is now much more standards compliant than older versions it no longer
behaves the same way in "standards" mode.