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Bug 22794 - Images with blank alt descriptions must be purely decorative according to spec
Summary: Images with blank alt descriptions must be purely decorative according to spec
Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME
Alias: None
Product: HTML WG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: HTML5 spec (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All All
: P1 normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: steve faulkner
QA Contact: HTML WG Bugzilla archive list
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: a11y
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2013-07-24 11:10 UTC by Lars Beck
Modified: 2013-09-17 07:05 UTC (History)
6 users (show)

See Also:

Attachments

Description Lars Beck 2013-07-24 11:10:21 UTC 
"Mark up purely decorative images so they can be ignored by assistive technology by using an empty alt attribute (alt="")."

By implication to the above-mentioned every image with a blank alt description must answer just decorative purposes, impaired visitors and their access technologies cannot know if the author just forgot or omited a description.

http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/embedded-content-0.html#a-purely-decorative-image-that-doesn't-add-any-information
Comment 1 steve faulkner 2013-09-17 07:05:55 UTC 
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are
satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If
you have additional information and would like the Editor to reconsider, please
reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML
Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest
title and text for the Tracker Issue; or you may create a Tracker Issue
yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document:

   http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html

Status: works for me
Change Description: no change
Rationale: The use of alt="" to mark images that are decorative is a long standing accessibility technique. (example http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG-TECHS/H67.html).