Don't forget the handicapped

.. I received a timely reminder

[austtr]

I received an email from a gentleman in California telling me that one of my sites did not support "text.handicapped" users. Thinking that the term probably means "visually impaired", but not being certain, I asked for further details and got the following response.

>>If one surfs using handicapped translation software, text on a website is important. Text is placed on a page using "Alt" tag attributes. Thus, if one cannot see an image, a text description will be visible or available for translation.

A suggested "Alt" tag might be:

Alt="(Image: Company Logo)"

Note that it is in brackets and uses the word "Image". This is to separate it from the actual text part of a website.<<

Because of all the spamming of alt tags that has taken place over the years, I had got into the (bad) habit of just simply ignoring them altogether. This gentleman's email has served as a reminder that sometimes we need to be a little more considerate in how we design.

[SlyGuy]

It's very true, Austtr

Many folks have forgotten that ALT tags aren't for keyword stuffing but providing alternate text for users who cannot display images, forms, or applets due to handicaps or old technology.

- Chad

[grahamstewart]

I often see the opposite extreme of this, where people put pointless alt descriptions on every image (because you have to if you want the html to validate [validator.w3.org]).

Alt descriptions like "spacer" or "a line" add nothing to the users experience and you should simply leave them blank (alt="").

(as recommended by the w3c [w3.org]).

[tedster]

Because this gentleman in CA is apparently using an audio user agent of some kind, I would tend to take his suggestions quite strongly. However, I'm wondering about his inclusion of the word "image" in the alt attribute.

Could it be that he's accustomed to hearing the word "image" because his user agent reads it from the <img> tag itself? Or is there a reason to include the apparently redundant word "image" in the alt attribute?