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Re: [External Sender][EXTERNAL] Image alt text for multiple product views on retail websites

for

From: Brian Lovely
Date: Sep 26, 2019 6:29AM

Hey Greg,

"man wearing..." is likely to not be useful if you're in the section of the
site devoted to men's clothing. Another way of looking at it is if every
picture description starts with "man wearing" is it really useful in
describing the purpose of any one unique image?

Mark is right in that (for clothing) the most important info is the style,
pattern, and color. For a vacuum cleaner or coffee maker, I would assume
the features are already described in text, so alt="Black and Decker Coffee
Maker Model 4598" is not really useful information that the user can't
already get from page content. Many of the images would best be hidden from
screen readers to reduce noise.

Again, if the style, pattern, and color of a garment is already provided in
page text, then the image is decorative and should be provided with an alt
attribute set to a null value.

It's a subtle art, and there's no one size fits all solution.




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