Re: Image Galleries, Alt vs caption.

B.K. DeLong wrote:
> I was thinking - is it overly redundant to have both an ALT attribute on 
> an image and a caption under the image?

I would argue that in the situation where you have a caption directly 
preceding or following the image (in the markup), you are providing 
enough information even for users that cannot see the image itself. The 
only difference is that it's not explicitly tied to the image (in the 
way that the alt attribute would). Additionally, if the image is a 
thumbnail linking to the full view image, then you'll still need some 
pretty explicit alt text, as users may just be tabbing from one link to 
the next - even if the description is in caption text before/after, they 
may not hear it if only the image itself is linked - this can be solved 
fairly easily by wrapping both the image and the caption text inside the 
same link, though:
<a href="large.jpg"><img src="small.jpg" alt="" />Photograph of my cat</a>

CSS generated content would be an ideal way to solve this: have the text 
in the alt, and use something like
img:after { content: attr(alt); }
Unfortunately this is not supported by all browsers.

In my humble opinion, anyway...it's a judgement call.
-- 
Patrick H. Lauke
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Received on Sunday, 5 December 2004 03:09:24 UTC