5 ms·

You should still be able to use alt="" to indicate that it is "decorative" and not meaningful imagery for a visually-impaired user.

by calvin 4y ago

latchkey 4y ago
That's like the difference between null and undefined.
- cramforce 4y ago
  If you have no alt attribute, then screen readers read the URL! Empty strings are the way to go for decorative images
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - latchkey 4y ago
    What if I have an app that no screen reader will ever read?
    - joshka 4y ago
      Then write your own component that extends and removes the requirement. Until then, web tooling is better off explicitly acknowledging that accessibility is an explicit goal.
  - abujazar 4y ago
    Alt is a required attribute of the <img> tag, so requiring it is just basic validation. C code won't compile if you omit the semicolon after statements, either.
chrisco255 4y ago
Instead use the ARIA tag role="presentation": https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/ARIA/Roles/presentation_role https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/A... to indicate when an element has no semantic meaning and is purely visual.
- klipilicica 4y ago
  "presentation" is the default role for an <img> element when the "alt" attribute is an empty string.
- krono 4y ago
  Which of these tags you should use and what they should contain is entirely context dependant. That said, the use of empty alt tags is generally discouraged and not even allowed together with the ARIA presentation role in most cases. This decision of theirs will steer developers towards non-compliant/asemantic code. It's really stupid. https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/images.html#alt https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/images.html#alt https://w3c.github.io/aria/#presentation https://w3c.github.io/aria/#presentation https://w3c.github.io/aria-practices/#presentation_role https://w3c.github.io/aria-practices/#presentation_role
  - chrisco255 4y ago
    That second link from W3C gives this very example: https://w3c.github.io/aria/#example-13 https://w3c.github.io/aria/#example-13 "In the following code sample, the containing img and is appropriately labeled by the caption paragraph. In this example the img element can be marked as presentation because the role and the text alternatives are provided by the containing element." <img src="example.png" role="presentation" alt=""> So empty alt tags are not discouraged.
    - krono 4y ago
      Hence the generally discouraged - as in not recommended in the majority of situations but exceptions exist (such as the one you provided).
- Vinnl 4y ago
  As I read that page, role="presentation" is intended to remove the natural semantics of a tag (e.g. have an <h2> be treated as a <div>), rather than to tell the user that there is nothing relevant to them in the given tag?

You should still be able to use alt="" to indicate that it is "decorative" and not meaningful imagery for a visually-impaired user.

by calvin 4y ago

You should still be able to use alt="" to indicate that it is "decorative" and not meaningful imagery for a visually-impaired user.

latchkey 4y ago

That's like the difference between null and undefined.

cramforce 4y ago
If you have no alt attribute, then screen readers read the URL! Empty strings are the way to go for decorative images
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- latchkey 4y ago
  What if I have an app that no screen reader will ever read?
  - joshka 4y ago
    Then write your own component that extends and removes the requirement. Until then, web tooling is better off explicitly acknowledging that accessibility is an explicit goal.
- abujazar 4y ago
  Alt is a required attribute of the <img> tag, so requiring it is just basic validation. C code won't compile if you omit the semicolon after statements, either.

chrisco255 4y ago

Instead use the ARIA tag role="presentation": https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/ARIA/Roles/presentation_role https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/A... to indicate when an element has no semantic meaning and is purely visual.

klipilicica 4y ago
"presentation" is the default role for an <img> element when the "alt" attribute is an empty string.
krono 4y ago
Which of these tags you should use and what they should contain is entirely context dependant. That said, the use of empty alt tags is generally discouraged and not even allowed together with the ARIA presentation role in most cases. This decision of theirs will steer developers towards non-compliant/asemantic code. It's really stupid. https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/images.html#alt https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/images.html#alt https://w3c.github.io/aria/#presentation https://w3c.github.io/aria/#presentation https://w3c.github.io/aria-practices/#presentation_role https://w3c.github.io/aria-practices/#presentation_role
- chrisco255 4y ago
  That second link from W3C gives this very example: https://w3c.github.io/aria/#example-13 https://w3c.github.io/aria/#example-13 "In the following code sample, the containing img and is appropriately labeled by the caption paragraph. In this example the img element can be marked as presentation because the role and the text alternatives are provided by the containing element." <img src="example.png" role="presentation" alt=""> So empty alt tags are not discouraged.
  - krono 4y ago
    Hence the generally discouraged - as in not recommended in the majority of situations but exceptions exist (such as the one you provided).
Vinnl 4y ago
As I read that page, role="presentation" is intended to remove the natural semantics of a tag (e.g. have an <h2> be treated as a <div>), rather than to tell the user that there is nothing relevant to them in the given tag?