[thelist] Re: <spacer>

Ben Phillips ben at inchima.com
Fri May 31 05:16:01 CDT 2002


> I'd have to say that putting ALT tags on a spacer image is
> definitely NOT the best thing to do as far as Accessibility
> goes. In the example of someone with a visual impairment
> using a text-reader such as JAWS they get something like the
> following:

but then your page won't validate...

> "LINK: Next Page, spacer dot gif, LINK: Index, spacer dot
> gif, LINK: About Us, spacer dot gif, LINK: Home, spacer dot gif"

and if you don't use alt tags, won't it show:

"LINK: Next Page, 'spacer.gif', LINK: Index, 'spacer.gif', LINK: About
Us, 'spacer.gif', LINK: Home, 'spacer.gif'"

ie. with the filenames instead of the alt tags?

> Now how annoying would that be to listen to on every web page
> you visited? Spacer gifs are invisible to the sighted for a
> reason, putting ALT tags on one actually makes it VISIBLE to
> a blind person.

i think the best method is to use alt=" ", ie. put a blank space in for
the alt text, so the text-reader will see a blank space rather than a
filename or a wordy alt attribute.

benji
inchima.com





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