Forum Discussion
Rise Alt Tags: "" vs. Leaving Blank
For decorative images in Rise, you can leave them blank or type "". It's obviously easier to leave them blank, but what is the difference? Do they both tell the screen reader to skip that item, or does only typing "" do that?
Don't type in any quotes, some screen readers will speak out the quote characters! The empty alt in Rise already has the appropriate empty html attribute.
Hi Julie! They do the same thing. In Rise, you used to have to type "" so some users may still be accustomed to that, but Articulate made an update so that leaving them blank does the same thing and marks the image decorative.
Some more info in this discussion. Do no type in any quotes, as it could create an error in the html as shown here, just leave blank:
https://community.articulate.com/discussions/rise-360/alt-text-null-tagThank you both for the quick feedback! This is going to save me some time. =D
Hi Julie, we use to leave the alt text area empty, but all of our images have the source/refence below in the caption area (Image by ... from ... shutterstock, etc) so if the alt text is empty the screen reader will go straight to the source below and read this out. Then the user will think the alt text was missing, so we have been adding Decorative image. This way screen reader users know when they can skip this content. So just something to keep in mind if you are using the caption area below decorative images.
