On 26/05/2004, at 2:34 PM, James Cowperthwaite wrote:
... for, ahem, images that may only be design elements of a page.
Would it be better to have a blank title and alt attributes on images that don't add any /real/ value to the site?
Or better to say:
title="graphical site element"?
Actually, I'd take them completely out of the mark-up, and insert them as background images on existing content items in the page.
If that can't happen (there's lots of cases where it can though), I'd consider placing an empty div in the page mark-up, and using it as a handle for the pure presentational graphic to be done with a background image once again.
Why? Because they're not CONTENT, they're presentation :)
I know you're still putting some additional mark-up handles in there that don't specifically relate to content, BUT that's what a DIV is for -- structure :)
<img src='images/useless.gif' alt='useless' height='20' width='20' />
could be replaced with
<div id='something-useless'> </div>
and styled with
#something-useless { width:20; height:20; background: url("images/useless.gif") no-repeat top left; }
It depends HOW accessible you want your pages to appear to screen readers, non-visual devices, text-only devices, etc.
Justin French
--- Justin French http://indent.com.au
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