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We all know that decorative images do not need a descriptive alt text. It just needs a null alt text. However, if I am getting an instagram feed, then are these images decorative or meaningful?

Btw, I am talking about WCAG 2.0 AA accessibility compliance guidelines.

Rick Smith
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Hello Universe
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2 Answers2

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The question is "what purpose does the feed serve"? If the page would be equally valuable to all users without the feed, then it can be judged to be presentational and null alts would be acceptable.

If it is not presentational, then if it is your Instagram feed, or you have the ability to influence the curator of the feed (e.g. you are paying for it) and there is the ability to enter a text description of the image that you could put into the alt attribute (or put inside an HTML5 <picture> element https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/picture), then you should do so and failure to do so would constitute non-conformance.

If it is not presentational and you cannot control or influence the content but you can take content that (should it exist) and place it in the alt or a <picture> element. Then you should do that.

unobf
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It would mainly depend on the image itself.

If you consider it's not useful for a blind people to know what it is about, then your whole feed should be located in a aria-hidden object, i think.

But there are other considerations like SEO.

Adam
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  • Hmm, sorry if I'm a bit touchy here but having the mindset of "if it's not useful for a blind people" is not quite the right approach. What you should really ask is if the image provides any semantics. Does it have meaning. As a visual user, if the image tells you something, even if only marginally important, then that info should not be hidden from low vision users of blind users. – slugolicious Sep 19 '15 at 06:23
  • And just to clarify, there isn't an aria-hidden "object". aria-hidden is a property you can apply to an html tag to hide the content from assistive technology. For example – slugolicious Sep 19 '15 at 06:26
  • Difficult to describe what I mean by "not useful", but sometimes it can be useful to title/describe a portrait (for instance), sometimes not. This does not have to do with semantic, but on the context. It's not because an image does not have semantic that it does not have to be described. For instance, something like "Portrait of James Dean in Rebel without a Cause" is something not semantic but something that can be useful. – Adam Sep 19 '15 at 11:48
  • And just to clarify, an html tag with the property aria-hidden produces an aria-hidden *element* if you prefer as the term object seems to be misleading... – Adam Sep 19 '15 at 11:58