[thelist] Accessibility and alt text - quality vs quantity

[Jono Young]

Whenever I build a site, if there is an image that does not convey any
message, or serve to inform the user, etc. I always just use <alt="">.  For
instance, on a spacer gif I would use:
<img src="../images/whatever.gif" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="">
-- 
Jono Young
Designer/Illustrator

On 1/27/04 1:23 PM, "Tony Crockford" <tonyc at boldfish.co.uk> wrote:

> Question:
> 
> if I have an image that is inessential to the content, but merely serves
> to add color to the page what is the best approach to alt text?
> 
> I curently have "picture illustrating the theme" (mainly because it's
> randomly selected) how do we feel about that?
> 
> My interpretation is that its okay since it has no relevance to the
> content but it's being argued that it should have a full text replacement
> for the picture (e.g. portrait of a lady in evening clothes, sitting by a
> window gazing out to sea)
> 
> What do we think?
> 
> Is WAI compliance based on *quality* of alt text or just it's existence?
> What would you do?
> 
> (example url if you want to look:
> http://www.torbytes.co.uk/op/tm1/lv2/index.htm - how WAI compliant would
> you say it was?)
> 
> TIA for your thoughts
> 
> Tony