le_gber - 9:15 pm on Sep 10, 2006 (gmt 0)

ridgway,

First to reply to your alt question. If a image is not vital to understand a page (like a spacer bar or even some curve to finish off a header) use alt="" in the img tag. This will allow screen readers to skip the image while going throught the page - installed Jaws this morning, a real eye opener.

The empty alt will not skip images when you use the tab, for this you need to put the image as a background element or use CSS.

Secondly, as buckworks said dive into accessibility is a very good read.

Now for online places to see if your site is valid and accessible - you could start by using automated tools like (in no particular order I use all of them to start with - before doing some manual checking)

for html validation - if you use html strict it will pick up missing alt tags