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Posted by Dylan Parry on 08/17/05 20:51
Using a pointed stick and pebbles, Red E. Kilowatt scraped:
> The purpose of alt text is to identify graphics that people either can't
> see or aren't downloading, so why wouldn't you use the alt text to
> identify the image as the site logo?
No, the purpose of alt text is to act as a _text replacement_ for when
an image is not or cannot be displayed (a subtle difference from your
definition).
One should not give alt text such as "Company Name Logo" but something
more appropriate, such as "Company Name". Whether it is the logo is
neither here nor there, and including the word "logo" in the alt text
reduces it to a description not a replacement, which is *not* the
purpose of alt text.
Also, setting alt text to "" is not just to get the page to validate but
rather to say to the user-agent that if the image cannot or is not
displayed then the suitable alt text is "", ie. the image has no meaning
other than as eye-candy and can be safely ignored by the user. If no
alt text was given, however, the user-agent may choose to display the
word "image" or even "image.ext", which is less than helpful and may
lead the user to think that the image was actual content, or worse still
it would litter the page with the word "image" making it difficult to read.
--
Dylan Parry
http://electricfreedom.org -- Where the Music Progressively Rocks!
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