Alt Text, Less Can be More

Aaron Cannon at NorthTemple.com offers insight from the perspective of a blind user on the importance of alt text. First from Aaron, as quoted by Ted Boren:

For some reason, some folks get it into their heads that being blind is really terrible and the only way our lives can be whole is for us to have all the pretty pictures in the world described to us. Where, in actuality, most blind folks couldn’t care less about most of it.

Aaron then expounds:

…if there was a picture of a man using a particular product, I’m really not interested in hearing “picture of a man looking pleased as punch to be using the new ultra-lite USB hair drier,” or worse, “picture of a man.” I really don’t care about what image the designers chose to use as eye-candy. I can’t see them, and descriptions of meaningless images just waste my time and delay my getting to the information I’m really interested in.

Read the entire post for an apt comparison of web accessibility to bread making. Thanks Aaron, I’ll think twice the next time I feel an urge to wax poetic in my alt text.

Accessibility guidelines make clear that null alt text should be used for images that do not convey meaning, decorative images. Is the point at which an image goes from meaningful to meaningless unclear to anyone else?