(Entry was posted by JL Faverio on this post in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 06/27/2019).

Should I leave the ALT tag empty?

Got an SEO / ADA question:For background or styling images on a website, should I leave the ALT tag empty? Or add something like ALT="decorative" or ALT="icon" or something else?

This question begins at 00:50:10 into the clip. Did this video clip play correctly? Watch this question on YouTube commencing at 00:50:10

Share on Twitter

Share on Facebook

YOUR ANSWERS

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

JL Faverio: Well according to W3C: https://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/images/decision-tree/ the answer is to leave it blank. What say you?
Kieran Gibbons: I don`t think it matters. Pretty sure it won`t read the alt tag if it`s a background image because it`s in the CSS
Jeremy L. Knauff: Yes.
Steve Wiideman: I don`t believe it matters since your site-wide images for styling are in your CSS, except your logo for mark-up purposes. If you have styling images as img tags, move them to your CSS.
Jeremy L. Knauff: Steve Wiideman there are cases where they need to be part of the html for styling.
Steve Wiideman: Jeremy L. Knauff yep, but ideally these would be sprites or webp when possible.
Jeremy L. Knauff: Agreed.
Kim Krause Berg: https://accessibility.huit.harvard.edu/%E2%9C%8E...
Kim Krause Berg: https://webaim.org/techniques/alttext/
JL Faverio: thanks Kim!