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RE: Blank alt attributes for images - best practise?

for

From: julian.rickards
Date: Oct 6, 2003 8:18AM

One of our designers (before Accessibility was the law and we had to change
our website) used to have a navbar that was a fake list. The navbar was a
three column table with a row for each link. The first column was a fixed
width of about 10px to offset the fake list from the left, the middle column
contained a bullet-type gif image and the third column contained the link.
The designer tried to quickly fix the bullet gif by giving it an alt="*"
which I then showed him how to create the same appearance with CSS.

Jake: Not to suggest that what you have said is wrong, but my example is one
where the * has been used inappropriately.

My approach to accessibility has been to pretend that I am reading the web
page outloud to someone who can't see the screen. If I came to a list (I
don't know how JAWS handles lists), I would say "The following is a list of
links: Home, Products, Services, ..." and I wouldn't read or describe the
bullet. Likewise, if I knew that a graphic was simply decorative, I would
say nothing about it which therefore requires an empty alt="".

---------------------------------------------------------
Julian Rickards
Digital Publications Distribution Coordinator
Publications Services Section
Ontario Ministry of Northern Development and Mines
Phone: (705) 670-5608
Fax: (705) 670-5690


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