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If an image doesn't add meaning, should it have alt text?

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From: Larry Hudson
Date: Apr 7, 2019 6:07PM

Hi everyone! I work at a company that makes accessible documents for people
with different types of disability.

We create Easy Read documents with clear, plain language for people with low
literacy and people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.
Each line of text has an image that illustrates the meaning of the text.

According to my interpretation of WCAG, images that do not add extra meaning
should not have alt text. It seems to me that these image descriptions will
get in the way of the meaning of the text, and make the document much longer
to read for screen reader users. However, we have found that quite a lot of
screen reader users like having descriptions of all images in a document.

A solution to this problem for HTML webpages is to include a hidden
JavaScript control so screen reader users can turn off image descriptions.

However, we also produce a lot of PDF and Word documents. I'm not sure what
the 'default' behaviour should be.

Have any of you dealt with an issue like this before?



If you're a screen reader user, would you prefer to have image descriptions
or just the text?



PS: If you're interested in reading more about this issue, I posted a thread
in the Blind subreddit
<https://www.reddit.com/r/Blind/comments/b9luia/if_an_image_doesnt_add_meani
ng_should_it_have_alt/> a few days ago and have received strong opinions on
both sides.



Thanks in advance,

Larry



Larry Hudson | Content Producer | The Information Access Group

Email: <mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> >
<EMAIL REMOVED> | Web:
<http://www.informationaccessgroup.com/>; www.informationaccessgroup.com