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Guessing ALT text for product images that are generated automatically

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From: Kerryn Sues
Date: Feb 28, 2011 6:36PM


Hello everyone and thanks in advance for your time and thoughts. We
have had many discussions on this here, but would love to get any
feedback.

On our site we have images that are automatically pulled on to the
page to illustrate a product. We don't know the actual content of
these images -- e.g., the product might be a Bali holiday, but the
picture may be a couple walking along a beach.

The closest we can get is to *guess* the content of the image by the
product title (e.g., ALT="Bali Holiday - 5 nights" or ALT="Bali") --
we can't get as specific as ALT="Couple walking along a beach".

So is it preferable to make a best guess at the content of the image,
or to leave it blank with ALT="" or ALT=" " (seeing as other text
content within the page describes the image).

Thanks again,
Kerryn