Alt Text Null Tag
Oct 05, 2023
By
LeAnn Drake
Hey community!
We used an outside vendor to help us audit our Rise 360 course for accessibility. We got dinged (a bunch) on decorative images. We followed Articulates advice of using the alt = "" for decorative images. However our vendor told us our back end code still uses the image tag.
Here is an example of HTML from our courses:
img alt="alt=""" class="flashcard-side__img flashcard-side__img--small flashcard-side__img--full" src="
Since the image alt = still exists, screen readers will announce an image. In other words the alt="" doesn't marked the image as decorative. We need the img alt= gone entirely from the code.
Does anyone else have experience with this? Articulate any fixes on the horizon for this in the future?
7 Replies
I think Articulate is handling this correctly, the empty alt tag will not be read to the user. You'd get dinged even worse for not having an alt tag. Empty alt tags may show up as a warning during an audit, and something to be aware of, but I would share this with your vendor:
https://accessibleweb.com/question-answer/when-should-i-use-a-null-or-empty-alt-tag/
Thanks for this information. I think my vendors issue is that the HTML is messy and is still announcing an image.
img alt="alt="""
If I was hand coding this it would be img alt ="" But Rise creates this code img alt="alt"" and that is messing with screen readers.
Oh I thought that was a typo in your message, if that is the actual code in your course, that would be a bug, obviously a mistake. Debugging my own flash cards I can't replicate that, would you be able to send a share link?
edit- just realized someone might be inserting the extra empty alt text inside where the alt text should go. If that is the case, just remove the alt text altogether, and it will show up as null/empty as below.
Ironically it is with every single instance we used the alt = null in this course!
Here is what we are doing on the Rise side.
aha, I see why you are doing that, and explains why the alt gets repeated in the code- if you just clear out that field and leave empty, it will restore the default empty alt tag. Rise might want to consider adding some validation to this field that would alert the user if they are trying to insert html, as the field is only meant to contain regular text.
Hi LeAnn,
I appreciate you sharing the image showing what you were typing in Rise 360.
We updated this behavior for less confusion.
Images will be treated as decorative by default when the alt text field is blank. You can also use the double quotes ("") in the alt text field, but no code is needed.
Enhanced: When you leave alt text for an image blank, it's marked as decorative and ignored by screen readers.
@Leslie you are amazing! Truly appreciate this clarification here and within the software! Thank you!!