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RE: Null or empty ALT attribute?

for

From: Glenda
Date: Jun 10, 2005 5:02PM

I love this! This thread is demonstrating the point that I want to make in
my article -- that web accessibility is more than simply applying a set of
rules. It entails knowing best practices in web design AND knowing the
current status of assistive technology.

I don't think most people "out there" understand web accessibility is not
absolute; there are grey areas. The question I asked, which I thought was
fairly straightforward, demonstrates that there is no simple answer. Now,
the challenge is to write this into a well-developed article.

The next question that comes to mind is, if it's more than a set of
rules/guidelines/standards [whatever you want to call them], how do you
teach web accessibility?

Cheers,
Glenda

Glenda Watson Hyatt, Principal
Soaring Eagle Communications
Accessible websites. Accessible content. Accessible solutions.
www.webaccessibility.biz


-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]On Behalf Of Jared Smith
Sent: Friday, June 10, 2005 3:28 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Null or empty ALT attribute?


Much of this alt=" " thing arose from early flawed screenreaders that
identified images that had alt="" but ignored images with alt=" ". Also,
many early (and some existing) tools did not allow the addition of true
empty alt text, so people just put a space in there so the alt attribute
showed up and they could be (supposedly) HTML compliant.

And to quote from the HTML specifications (though their example is a
rather poor one):

"Do not specify irrelevant alternate text when including images intended
to format a page, for instance, alt="red ball" would be inappropriate for
an image that adds a red ball for decorating a heading or paragraph. In
such cases, the alternate text should be the empty string (""). Authors
are in any case advised to avoid using images to format pages; style
sheets should be used instead."

In short, alt="" is correct. Null (or empty or whatever) alt text usually
indicates the use of images for decoration, spacing, and other
non-important elements. Such decoration/styling/positioning should be done
with styles instead, so this is why images that use alt="" should be
avoided.

An obvious exception to this is when the alternative text for an image is
presented within the content of the page, such as in an image caption. In
this case, rather than repeating the description in the alt attribute, the
alt attribute for the image should be set to "".

Any system that does not allow null alt text (previous versions of
Frontpage and Dreamweaver come to mind) is flawed.

Jared Smith
WebAIM





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