Please get rid of those alt tags

Posted by Chris Tingom on March 2, 2006 at 12:06 pm.

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We had a client ask us to get rid of all of the Alt tags on their site. Despite our efforts to explain what they did. It’s always interesting to me how people ask for things without getting all of the facts. Making decisions without knowing the consequences you could say. In the same meeting the client asked us what we were doing to optimize their site for search engines.

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6 Comments ( RSS comment feed | TrackBack URI ) »

Comment posted by Josh Delsman on March 2, 2006 at 12:13 pm
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Yeah, gotta love the naive clients.

Comment posted by Don on March 2, 2006 at 4:16 pm
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“In addition to gettting rid of the alt tags, could you get rid of those pesky p tags too? And while you’re at it, could you start automating our atuomation process?”

Comment posted by Jared Christensen on March 2, 2006 at 6:39 pm
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ALT isn’t actually a tag so much as it is an attribute. And a very important one at that. I would seriously tell them that the attribute is non-negotioable, and that browsers insert them automatically. I mean, if they’re dumb enough to want them gone, they’re dumb enough to believe you have no control over it.

Comment posted by Chris Tingom on March 2, 2006 at 6:49 pm
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Jared,

You are so right. I’ve always called them tags out of habit. Odd. Anyways, the attributes are gone now so it’s done. The dirty deed has been taken care of.

Comment posted by Jeff Schinella on March 2, 2006 at 7:16 pm
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…”oh, better not let the ADA find out about that, they’ll come at you with a citation!” (that’s what you tell thh client)

and for all intensive purposes, run a scan on the site with this…
http://webxact.watchfire.com/scanform.aspx
…and tell them to read this…
http://www.w3.org/WAI/

…I’m sure the ACLU wouldn’t approve either, but I can’t quite say how ;-P

Comment posted by Alan White on March 6, 2006 at 3:12 am
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Man, I can’t believe clients do things like this, it really frustrates me when I do something well only to have a client demand something stupid (I am however getting better at putting my foot down). It also breaks my heart to see some sites that I have done in the past have been migrated back to tables.

I wouldn’t mind but at the end of the day all previous work forms your portfolio and how do you then go on to explain “… well… err, it *was* built properly but isn’t now”.