Rise Alt Tags: "" vs. Leaving Blank

Jun 13, 2024

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? 

5 Replies
Wilfried Sharp

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.