Microsoft has a service called the Computer Vision API (Application Programming Interface). It’s a simple system: feed it an image, and it analyzes the image and returns text feedback. This is not a simple analysis task, but the actual process for a user is amazingly streamlined. Naturally, very little time passed before this service was called up to provide automatic alternative text. And, honestly, this seems like an awesome way to do this! Who needs to take the time and […]
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Are alt attributes required? Always?
TL;DR Yes. Yes, they are. Although the HTML5 specifications include a special case where the alt attribute can be omitted and still be conformant HTML5, this certainly doesn’t apply to any image you add to a page.
alt attributes required? Always?” »Best practices: keywords in alt attributes
This is certainly a subject that I’ve covered before — in fact, it’s something I would hardly choose to cover yet again if it didn’t continue cropping up as an important issue. The use of text in alt attributes is an extremely sensitive subject. Today, the good folks at SEOmoz published an extensive article documenting their statistical findings on web site ranking factors, as gathered from the data in their LinkScape analysis tool. It’s a good article, and demonstrates some […]
Continue reading “Best practices: keywords in alt attributes” »Alternative Text for Significant Images
In the comments from my most recent article, “Supporting Standards that Support Accessibility,” a number of interesting thoughts were raised concerning the requirement (or lack thereof) of the alt attribute in HTML (HyperText Markup Language) 5. It’s a difficult issue. I’ve seen numerous articles around the web which discuss the fact that HTML 5 does not require the alt attribute. To some degree, this is true: HTML 5 provides exclusions to the requirement. In situations where an image is significant […]
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