- From: Anne van Kesteren <fora@annevankesteren.nl>
- Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 13:05:30 +0100
Quoting Alexey Feldgendler <alexey at feldgendler.ru>: >>> I wonder why alt is a required attribute for IMG in HTML while an >>> empty value is allowed. > >> Because an empty value means that there is no alternate text and no >> attribute at >> all means that alternate text is missing. (Which is clearly not what >> you want.) > > The same could be said about title="", for example: > > "An empty value means that there is no title, and no attribute at all > means that the title is missing." But HTML doesn't declare the title > attribute as required. That is because the "title" attribute is not important for the element its _contents_. Without the "alt" attribute <img> becomes meaningless for devices (and people) who can not interpreted images. Now I guess that in some way no "alt" could have been designed to mean that there is no alternative content, but that's not how it is. I believe UAs are free to make up alternate content in such situations. By for example trying to get information from the file name... -- Anne van Kesteren <http://annevankesteren.nl/>
Received on Thursday, 19 January 2006 04:05:30 UTC