alt text in images

[ses5909]

Are you making use of it? It's good for accessibility purposes but if you don't care about that, it is also good for traffic. I have had plenty of hits to my blogs because I gave images some alt text. What has your experience been?

[davemcnally]

Indeed I am. A lesson taught from Zeldman and never forgotten!

[jMcQuarrie]

I always use them for accessibility reasons, but you're right they really help out when it comes to getting search traffic. I get plenty of of traffic on some old retired sites purely thanks to Google image searches.

[rodaniel]

Yup, I always use ALT & TITLE attributes on my images and I do get a fair bit of traffic due to Google image searches.

[SarahG]

Always do. As someone who used to surf with images turned off (pre ADSL) I found it a nightmare going to sites that ran on pure images with no alt text

[shyflower]

I use alt text for images, except for links, I am more apt to use the title attribute. However, I try to keep images that link to a minimum.

[SarahG]

for links the alt attribute for an image is far more important than a title attribute. a spider will read the alt text and give that more preference over anything else.

for valid xhtml strict code all images should have alt attributes. They do say that if an image isn't of any use ie. it's there for design purposes over content purposes then it can have an empty alt, however if it's there for design then it should be served by the CSS not the markup.

[shyflower]

I totally understand what spiders like to see and what the validators require. However, I write and design first for my visitors and then for bots. I believe it is far more important to all visitors, including the visually impaired, to know if the Siamese Cat image will take them to the Siamese Cat Gallery, an article on Siamese Cats, or just a larger representation of the image than it is to note that it is an image of Siamese Cat.

Moreover, Search Engines put very little weight on the Alt Attribute since it is frequently keyword stuffed by black hatters in an attempt to manipulate results.

I do agree that images for design only are best rendered using css.

[SarahG]

But with a title attribute, you have to hover over the link to see it. So if the image doesn't load, for whatever reason, your visitor won't know what should have been there and may not realise there is a link there.

On a more general note, an ex-client's site (who clearly moved forward from leaving us), that is not from the 90's but last year - Fitness & Personal Training (http://www.thebalancedbodyltd.co.uk/). Turn off the images and see the glory! That mad thing is, she's very partially sighted and relies on a screen reader!

[fatnewt]

I use alt whenever it's relevant to. If the image is purely decorative I leave it blank most times.

[adalante]

Yes, i agree it does bring in quite a bit of traffic.

[shyflower]

But with a title attribute, you have to hover over the link to see it. So if the image doesn't load, for whatever reason, your visitor won't know what should have been there and may not realise there is a link there.

On a more general note, an ex-client's site (who clearly moved forward from leaving us), that is not from the 90's but last year - Fitness & Personal Training (http://www.thebalancedbodyltd.co.uk/). Turn off the images and see the glory! That mad thing is, she's very partially sighted and relies on a screen reader!


Good point. The problem is that only one tool tip is presented on mouseover. I wonder if there's a work around for that?

[SarahG]

What are you after a work around for (sorry am lost now!). The tool tip, as you know, is the title attribute, and the alt shouldn't show in a tool tip. Or do you mean if you have a title attribute in both the image and the link?

Ideally for a linked image you should have the alt attribute for the image, no title attribute, and then add a title attribute to the link to describe the link if it's really needed.

Or am I way off your line of thought ;)

[fatnewt]

The tool tip, as you know, is the title attribute, and the alt shouldn't show in a tool tip.

In Internet Explorer, the alt attribute shows up as a tooltip, not the title of a link.

I just ran some tests to be sure, and apparently in IE:


The title attribute of the image is shown as a tooltip, if it exists
If there's no title on the image, the alt attribute is shown
If there's no alt attribute, THEN the link's title is shown

[SarahG]

I know IE can display the alt in a tooltip but I didn't realise it did this by default though, as i always remember seeing under the internet tools and advanced options 'expand alt text for images'. unless that's ticked by default.

[fatnewt]

I see an "Always epand ALT text for images" on mine, and it's not ticked -- but what I described is still the behaviour I get. Hmmm.

[SarahG]

typical buggy IE behaviour then! ;)

[malique]

its good seo!
yes for me!

[shyflower]

In Internet Explorer, the alt attribute shows up as a tooltip, not the title of a link.

I just ran some tests to be sure, and apparently in IE:


The title attribute of the image is shown as a tooltip, if it exists
If there's no title on the image, the alt attribute is shown
If there's no alt attribute, THEN the link's title is shown


Are you saying that the title attribute takes precedence over the alt attribute, because that isn't the experience I've had. In tests I've done in IE, its most often the way of your third bulleted point. If the title attribute did take precedence there's no reason to not use them both (if necessary).

... and as an aside, before we get into the glory of better browsers, remember that the market share, like it or not, still belongs to IE.

[fatnewt]

In my tests (WinXP/IE7) the title attribute of the <img> element took precedence over the alt attribute -- but if the image was a link, ALT still took precedence over the title of the <a> element. (i.e. - there had to be no title or alt on the image for the title of the link to show up.)

[shyflower]

okay, that answers my question. I have never used a title attribute in images; I only use them for links, which is why if I have an image that links, I would much rather my readers know where the link takes them than describe the image for them. I don't know exactly how screen readers work, but I would think if they can read attributes such as alt, em, and strong, they can also read title attributes.

[SarahG]

screen readers by default won't necessarily read the title attributes but they can be set to do so. of course different software does different things!

[rodaniel]

I still contend that it's worth the little extra effort to add both ALT and TITLE attributes on image tags...

[fatnewt]

I don't know. If there's no link, I find the title attribute on an image with a sufficiently-descriptive alt value to be a little redundant.

[SarahG]

I agree with fatnewt. If the alt text is sufficient then there's no use in repeating it under the title. In fact on the Royal National Insitute for the Blind site (UK) somewhere it does state on there that you shouldn't just repeat the text for the sake of it. Imagine if your screen reader does read out the title attributes, you'd just get it repeated to you twice which is a bit boring and annoying!

Any annoyingly, WordPress does this with page link anchor/title attribute text (I've probably already moaned about this!).

[Bloggeries]

I wrote a blog review on 2 NBA blogs at different times and to this day I get many uniques daily through google images for an array of terms. I highly recommend it.