[whatwg] Definition of alt= attribute

[Jim Ley]

On 1/19/06, Anne van Kesteren <fora at annevankesteren.nl> wrote:
> Quoting Alexey Feldgendler <alexey at feldgendler.ru>:
> > I wonder why alt is a required attribute for IMG in HTML while an
> > empty  value is allowed.
>
> Because an empty value means that there is no alternate text and no
> attribute at
> all means that alternate text is missing. (Which is clearly not what
> you want.)

I think Alexey's point is that in a correctly authored page no alt
attribute could perfectly reasonably mean the attribute is empty, this
is a good argument, but one that falls down in reality because so few
pages are correctly authored so those groups needing good ALT are left
at a disservice unless authors co-operate by specifically giving ALT
an empty value.

Jim.