Alt tagging images

is this common practice now?

[limbo]

I heard that all images within a site should be alt tagged. what are the reasons for this? - SEO? For Disabled Users? Browser differences?

Cheers.

[creative craig]

ALT stands for ALTernative, for peopl who surf with images disabled. Instead of getting a stupid red X they will get the ALT text.

Making your ALT text a good site description with a well placed keyword can help to, I wouldnt do it for all your ALT tags if there are alot of images though.

[jackofalltrades]

If your graphics dont display (for whatever reason) the ALT text is displayed instead.

So, for users with visual impairments who use different technologies to view your site, it interprets the ALT text as a description of an image and conveys that to the user (different depending on the technology).

So in this respect your ALT tags should be descriptive of the image (and the target location of a link if you use your graphics as links).

This also helps people who have graphics turned off on browsers.

Im not sure about the SEO value of ALT tags, but they definitely have a usability and accessability function.

Better to have than not! :)

Also, ive seen SEOs use the ALT tags to cram in keywords. I think having keywords in there has to be of some benefit, but only if the KWs are descritive of the graphic.

rgds

JOAT

[fathom]

All of the above.

Alt -- stand for alternative as in text so if images does not diplay or a blind person with a text/speech convert can understand.

PDA also do not see images therefore the alt text is represented.

SEO provides somewhat of a boost.

Most newer browser with display the alt text as a mouse rollover text.

[creative craig]

I think having keywords in there has to be of some benefit, but only if the KWs are descritive of the graphic.

I wouldnt say that, I have seen a few sites that have keywords in the ALT tag for their cellspacers and it doesnt seem to have hurt them. Just so long as not every single image on the page has the same keyowrd otherwise it may be seen as abit of spam.

Craig

[jackofalltrades]

yeh what ive seen tho is cramming keyword1, 2, 3, 4, 5 into a small alternative language image. That doesnt help anyone and is blatant spamming.

JOAT

[creative craig]

True, if its blatant spam then I would hope that they would get reported.

Craig

[limbo]

Thanks all.

It makes sense that the alternative text tag would be used in this way. I will tag images that would benfit from this. I do most of my page authoring over an 100,000 user intranet for a large corporation so we have many users with specialist software/hardware including PDA's and blind and deaf users. The inclusion of alt tags may take us a while but I'm sure our users will realise the improvements.

Ta

[kevchadders]

It also helps if you want to validate your html pages for 4.01

[validator.w3.org...]