RE: Search engine and alt text: [techs] Latest HTML Techniques Draft

one of my co-workers was architect at alta-vista so I asked him; seems
that 'most' search engines should be expected to parse text that is in
elements and can be expected to parse certain attribute values, like
alt, as well.
 
/m

________________________________

From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Sailesh Panchang
Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2003 1:33 PM
To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: Search engine and alt text: [techs] Latest HTML Techniques
Draft


Ref:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/WD-WCAG20-HTML-TECHS-20031104.html    
 
Under the section that talks about:
Using markup (and style sheets) where possible rather than images
promotes accessibility,
it says:
* Search engines can use text information.
 
Question:  Do search engines really  scan alt text given for images  ?
They might be able to but do they really do so now in practice? This
claim should be justifiable. 
Sailesh Panchang
Senior Accessibility Engineer 
Deque Systems,11180  Sunrise Valley Drive, 
4th Floor, Reston VA 20191
Tel: 703-225-0380 Extension 105 
E-mail: sailesh.panchang@deque.com
Fax: 703-225-0387
* Look up <http://www.deque.com> *