This is an archived snapshot of W3C's public bugzilla bug tracker, decommissioned in April 2019. Please see the home page for more details.
This was was cloned from bug 17629 as part of operation convergence. Originally filed: 2012-06-28 10:26:00 +0000 Original reporter: Ian Yang <ian.html@gmail.com> ================================================================================ #0 Ian Yang 2012-06-28 10:26:41 +0000 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On the Presentation Role section of W3C ARIA Authoring Practices ( http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/aria-practices/#presentation_role ), it states that img elements can be validly without alt="" if they have role="presentation". However, W3C markup validator currently treats that as invalid. Is that because of one of the following reasons? * The statement conflicts with HTML5 spec * The statement is true and HTML5 spec has not been updated * The markup validator has a bug ================================================================================ #1 steve faulkner 2012-06-28 10:54:19 +0000 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- its the first: * The statement conflicts with HTML5 spec In HTML5 the only conforming instance where an img element can be without an alt attribute is if the img is contained with a figure element which has a non empty figcaption http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/the-img-element.html#guidance-for-conformance-checkers <figure> <img> <figcaption>caption text</figcaption> </figure> note: conformance checkers are also currently allowed to suppress missing alt errors for pages that include a meta name=generator, but this is under review: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2012Jun/0137.html ================================================================================ #2 Ian Yang 2012-06-28 11:06:41 +0000 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi Steve, Thanks! Is W3C currently accept suggestions for such cases? If so, I would like to make a suggestion to add one more conforming instance where an img element can be without an alt attribute if the img's ARIA role is "presentation" (role="presentation"). Thanks, Ian ================================================================================ #3 steve faulkner 2012-06-28 11:25:45 +0000 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi Ian, The idea has been dicusssed previously and rejected as the conformance requirements hor HTML5 should not be based on external specifications. You can of course refloat the idea ================================================================================ #4 Ian Yang 2012-06-28 11:30:04 +0000 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi Steve, Thanks a lot. Since it has been discussed before, I will not refloat it. Regards, Ian ================================================================================
If you have a presentational image, then the only sensible value of the alt="" attribute is the empty string. The empty string _means_ "it's presentational, don't show it to the AT", exactly the same as role=presentation. So instead of saying role=presentation, do alt="". (You can do both, if you want to, but there's not much point.)
Thanks Hickson for the info that "empty alt value means the image is presentational and shouldn't be shown to the AT".