Re: Why does it say ALL images need alt tags?

On Monday, Nov 11, 2002, at 09:43 Asia/Tokyo, Aziz Matar wrote:

> I can understand how alt tags help, but for some images that are used 
> as part of the sites navigation, for example, a small 10x10 square 
> that is used to draw a curve and placed on the corner of your tables 
> for decoration, why does the validator want alt tags on those? I hate 
> that I cant make the page validate as XHTML 1.0 because my navigation 
> images do not have alt tags and I do not want to give them any. :-( 
> Any ideas to work around this?

Think of it this way:
- you're using the validator because you want to conform to a standard
- the above mentioned standard (XHTML 1.0) says "all images must have 
alt tags"

So basically, if you *want* your XHTML to be valid you *want* alt tags 
for all images.


And yes, we could go the other way around and argue over whether 
"layout images" as you call them are useful or harmful, but please, no, 
that's off-topic on the validator's list.

Hope this helps.


-- 
Olivier Thereaux - W3C - QA : http://www.w3.org/QA/
http://www.w3.org/People/olivier | http://yoda.zoy.org