Re: Web Accessibility Tutorials: Images and Tables

Hi Olaf,

> [3]
> The last bit goes back to my limited familiarity with details in HTML:
> - is
>  alt
> really equivalent to
>  alt=""
> ?
> - if so, why do the examples in W3C WAI related content I have run 
> into (and definitely those in the image tutorial)  use
>  alt=""
> ?

In modern HTML5 browsers, alt will be interpreted as alt="", but I 
don’t consider using this as best practice, especially when educating 
website authors:

* Having the ="" in there show that the empty alt is a deliberate 
decision and not something forgotten.

* Older browsers or assistive technology might treat alt without a value 
as missing and might announce the filename instead of nothing.

* Using two syntaxes like this with minor differences and little to no 
gain would only confuse some people and would be hard to explain, imho.

Best, Eric

--

Eric Eggert, Web Accessibility Specialist
WAI-ACT Project

I’m yatil on IRC.