Over-redundancy of ALT text?

Supposing that I wanted to provide both iconic and textual clues on a
navigation bar, how would I go about it?

It seems like an idea that might be good: provide an icon of a magnifying
glass sext to the word "search", etc. Might speed up identification for the
average user as well as one with cognitive disabilities. But under current
guidelines, how does one provide meaningful "alt" text for an image that's
only there to enhance a nearby text (link)?

Having a screen reader render "Icon: Magnifying glass", "link: search", etc.
for 5 or so icon-link pairs seems like a waste of the user's time,
especially for something emphasizing brevity like a navbar. Would using
alt="" carry that feeling of, "I don't know what this image was supposed to
be"?

David Holstius
holstius@msu.edu

Received on Friday, 15 December 2000 20:51:31 UTC