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"Purely decorative images must be marked up so they can be ignored by assistive technology with a null alt attribute (alt="") or preferably use CSS techniques. If the image isn't providing the user any informative content or enhancing greater understanding of the content, then the alt attribute must be empty." 1) Remove the word empty and replace it with "must have a null value" 2) Two low vision members of the WCAG mentioned today that CSS background images mess with the contrast changes they try to make. So I suggest remove "or preferably use CSS techniques" http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2014AprJun/0122.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2014AprJun/0121.html
I withdraw and save for next round
Moved into LC1 component as per discussion in HTML A11Y Task Force on 29 January 2015
The language in the section had changed some since the original comment. Proposed change is: <p>Purely decorative images are visual enhancements, decorations, or embellishments that provide no function or information beyond aesthetics to users who can view the images.</p> <p>Mark up purely decorative images so they can be ignored by assistive technology by using an empty <code>alt</code> attribute (alt=""). </p> <p class='note'>An alternate technique is to include the image using CSS. This is NOT recommended, as CSS background images can make it difficult for visually impaired users to enable "high contrast" mode.</p>
Moved to HTML on Github https://github.com/w3c/html/issues/307