grahamstewart - 9:48 pm on Jun 8, 2003 (gmt 0)

if the spacer uses just alt="" then the visually impaired will have the name of the image read (picture that with 45 spacers on a page) but won't if alt=" " is used.

W3C recommend using an empty/null alt tag where no description would be appropriate so thats what I do. If this causes the screen reader reads out the full image filename, then frankly its a rubbish screen reader.

A small point tho...

Spacers are very old school. I never use them these days. Whats the point?

If you have 'got with the program' and you handle your layout in CSS, then you can do all the neccessary spacing using the x,y,margin,padding,width and height properites.

And if you've yet to see the light and switch to CSS then you could still handle spacing by using divs or spans of the required size, theres no need for an image.