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F39: Failure of SC 1.1.1 due to providing a text alternative that is not null. (e.g. alt="spacer" or alt="image") for images that should be ignored by assistive technology

Applicability

Applies to HTML 4.x and XHTML 1.x.

This failure relates to:

Description

This describes a failure condition for text alternatives for images that should be ignored by AT. If there is no alt attribute at all assistive technologies are not able to ignore the non-text content. The alt attribute must be proved and have a null value (i.e. alt="" or alt=" ") to avoid a failure of this success criterion.

Note: Although alt=" " is valid, alt="" is recommended.

Examples

Failure Example 1: Decorative images that have no alt attribute

Resources

No resources available for this technique.

(none currently listed)

Tests

Procedure

Identify any img and applet elements that are used for purely decorative content;
Check that the alt attribute for these elements exists.
Check that the alt attribute for these elements is null.

Expected Results

If step #2 or step #3 is false, this failure condition applies and content fails the success criterion.