[thelist] alt tags

James Aylard evolt at pixelwright.com
Wed Jul 24 10:20:00 CDT 2002


Chris,

> According to the RNIB you should use alt="*" where the image is used
purely for layout purposes and for long descriptions use LONGDESC.
>
> ref: http://www.rnib.org.uk/digital/hints.htm under the subtitle:Images

    Unfortunately, this is one of those debates that goes around and around
whenever it comes up. The RNIB makes an interesting argument for using an
asterisk, but this is contrary to the W3C's HTML 4.x recommendation [1] to
use an empty string. IMO, practical implementation and experience both
recommend in favor of using the empty string instead of an asterisk or a
space (another common suggestion).

1. http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/objects.html#adef-alt

James Aylard




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