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[Accessibility support] - Empty alt attribute is now consistently supported #2274

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carlosapaduarte merged 2 commits into from
Apr 22, 2025
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[Accessibility support] - Empty alt attribute is now consistently supported #2274

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Removed assumption about browsers handling images with empty alt in d…
giacomo-petri Feb 6, 2025
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Merge branch 'develop' into giacomo-petri-patch-23a2a8-accsupport-1
carlosapaduarte Mar 17, 2025
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1 change: 0 additions & 1 deletion _rules/image-non-empty-accessible-name-23a2a8.md
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Expand Up @@ -55,7 +55,6 @@ There are no assumptions.

### Accessibility Support

- There are several popular browsers that do not treat images with an empty `alt` attribute (`alt=""`) as having a role of `presentation` but instead add the `img` element to the accessibility tree with a [semantic role][] of either `img` or `graphic`.
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@WilcoFiers WilcoFiers Feb 6, 2025

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Looks great!

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@dd8 dd8 Feb 6, 2025

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This has been very well supported across multiple AT/browser combinations since 2014:
https://www.powermapper.com/tests/screen-readers/labelling/img-null-alt/

- Implementation of [Presentational Roles Conflict Resolution][] varies from one browser or assistive technology to another. Depending on this, some [semantic][semantic role] `img` elements can fail this rule with some technology but users of other technologies would not experience any accessibility issue.
- Images can have their role set to `presentation` through an empty `alt` attribute. [Presentational Roles Conflict Resolution][] does not specify what to do if such an image is [focusable][] (it only specifies what to do in case of explicit `role="none"` or `role="presentation"`). Some browsers expose these images and some don't. Thus, this rule may fail for technologies that expose these without creating an accessibility issue for users of other technologies.

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