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Re: Alt Tag [sic] Pedantry

for

From: Kynn Bartlett
Date: Feb 16, 2006 12:09PM

On 2/16/06, Austin, Darrel < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
> > If a web developer is going to dilligently add alt text [*]
> > to her creations, I don't give a damn what slang term she
> > wants to use.
>
> You should when that term is misleading and confuses. If people building
> web sites can't be bothered with understanding HTML, then we have bigger
> problems. ;o)

Now you're just insulting the original poster. I don't see anything in
there which indicates that he has no knowledge of the alt attribute
and would attempt to use a non-existent <alt> element instead.

I don't see what's so hard about understanding that "alt tag" is slang
which pre-dates even WCAG 1.0, and which is in fairly common usage in
web design.

There are NO web designers -- especially not on this mailing list --
who sit down and go "oh, gosh, I wanted to add alternative text,
should I use <img alt="".../> or should I use the ALT TAG?" Zero.
None. Period.

Let's stop pretending like there are, and it's something we need to
guard against.

--Kynn