Alt Text Exclusions

In our discussions of Alt text, several people have suggested that several
words should be excluded.

Andrew noted that Alt text used in images that are links should not start
with the word "link". (e.g. "link to our home page") This is because the
image is explicitly a link and user agents can tell the user that.

John noted that the Alt text used in images that are links should not have
the same Alt text as the link text. (e.g. <a href="home"><img src="pic.jpg"
alt="home page"/>home page</a>

We could also exclude the words "submit" and "button" on INPUT elements that
have a type of "image". It's already explicit in the HTML code that the this
is a submit button so the Alt text should contain other information.

To my eyes, these exclusions don't map directly to a guideline success
criteria and don't have an associated technique. They could be mapped to
guideline 2.4 L2 SC 3 - "Blocks of repeated material..." but that's a
stretch.

Excluding these words will improve Alt text but is it worth creating tests
and techniques for these issues?

Cheers,
Chris

Received on Wednesday, 12 January 2005 19:21:19 UTC