----- Original Message -----
From: "cat soul" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2010 11:03 AM
Subject: [WSG] alt text on email graphic
The technique of using a graphic to communicate an email address in order
to foil spiders or harvesters, like this:
bob at domain dot com
seems pretty clever. Yet, when I think about the alt text for that image,
I'm wondering if that alt text could be exploited by spiders...
would it be good to handle it this way:
<img src="mail.gif" alt="bob's email">
and leave it at that? for those who really use alt text, might they be
short changed by not seeing or hearing:
<img src="mail.gif" alt="bob at domain dot com">
or am I making mountains out of molehills here?
cs
Hmm, using alt text on an image, or rather using an image at all for this is
rather pointless.
As, you can't use alt text as a screen reader won't be able to read the
image content, and if you use alt text spam bots will pick up the content
and spam the address.
The only way you can do it properly, is by either just place the email
strait on the page as a text link, and have some decent spam filtering to
get rid of the crap that comes through, or the better way is to use a form.
You can't use an image capcha though as they are not accessible, so you need
to be a bit creative with the use of capcha.
Or just program the form script properly and have a decent web security
set-up on your web server.
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