On 6 May 2010 02:36, John <j...@coffeeonmars.com> wrote: > I'm validating my website pages, html first, and mostly what I'm > getting errors on is my failure to use alt inside my img tags.. > Actually, it's more of a warning, I guess it's promoting best > practices, but lack of alt doesn't seem to affect the validity and > function of the code.
In HTML 4.x and XHTML 1.x, the alt attribute (not tag) is mandatory. It is an error. > But as I'm going through each image tag, I wonder how verbose should > I be? The alt attribute should convey the same information that the image is supposed to convey to people who can see it. Some images convey important information, some are decorative, some convey information that exists elsewhere on the page (so don't *add* information, e.g. a graph of data that also appears in a table). > Is the assumption that blind people will gain value from > hearing a description of every image they can not see? And users of text browsers, people who turn images off to preserve bandwidth (3G still isn't fast enough a lot of the time, and they can turn images back on if the text suggests it is an image they want to see), search engines, etc. > However for other sites, is it wise and proper to paint as much of a > picture as you can for benefit of those who can't see? Maybe the > answer is an obvious "yes" for some images, but I can also imagine it > being pretty annoying hearing "logo" over and over again, whereas > there could be some functional benefit to hearing "shopping cart icon." This is why the alt attribute is for an alternative, not a description. A logo isn't added to a page to say "This is ACME Inc.'s logo", it just means "ACME Inc." and a graphic of a shopping cart icon just means "shopping cart" but might be right next to the text "shopping cart" so could be just represented as: <a><img alt=""> shopping cart</a> because it doesn't add any additional information (and "shopping cart shopping cart" is just silly. > thoughts? http://www.alanflavell.org.uk/alt/alt-text.html -- David Dorward <http://dorward.me.uk><http://blog.dorward.me.uk> ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [cs...@lists.css-discuss.org] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
