Hide 'Alt' Tags?? Help guys!! :)

[garysumpter]

Hi all.

Is there a code that will make alt tags invisible?

My reasons??...........

The pages that I am currently creating have a lot of alt tags, this is to aid our search engine rankings, unfortunately tho, when you hover over an image the alt tag is displayed, as our alt tags are quite long this looks UGLY, I mean really bad.

Is there a way to keep the alt tags within the page but not have them pop up when a visitor hovers over an image?

Your ideas and feedback GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks

Gary Sumpter
www.readycrest.co.uk

[AdamGundry]

You shouldn't be using alt tags in this way, as it looks bad (especially for users with images disabled) and probably will do nothing to help your search engine rankings anyway. BTW, text specified in alt should not appear as a tooltip, that is IE behaving incorrectly. The correct attribute for making tooltips appear is title.

Adam

[garysumpter]

Thanks for the quick reply.

With regards to not using alt tags in this way, we have been researching heavily into search engine optimisation and using alt tags is another way of getting keywords into the source without obviously just filling the page with keywords. The more the relevant words are mentionned within the page, combined with their relevancy, is a very important factor in how the search engines rank the page.

Your comments?


Thanks

[xataku_nakusute]

have you tried using meta tags?

[garysumpter]

I am optimising the meta tags, meta keywords, meta description, page titles and alt tags.

Gary

[xataku_nakusute]

oic

[Charles]

The "alt" attribute is there to provide an alternative text to be displayed when the browser cannot display the image. It's an accessibility feature for the blind and it is a very cruel and evil thing that you are doing. I know for certain that it is against the law in the United States where I live and I believe that it's a crime in the UK as well.

If you really want to make make your page accessible to search engines then make it accessible. Us e HTML properly (don't use tables for layout, mark up headings with the H elements and so on) and follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/)

[garysumpter]

Against the law? Surely not.

[Charles]

In the US it violates the Americans with Disabilities Act. And I believe that it violates the UK's Disability Discrimination Act of 1995. See http://elj.warwick.ac.uk/jilt/01-2/sloan.html.

And if it isn't against the law are you really that cruel and evil a person that you would do sush harm to the blind? Do you go about baiting guide dogs for sport?

[garysumpter]

Charles,

You are really jumping the gun here,

How many prople are likely to have images turned off?

We are catering for a HUGE audience here, not just a few people.

[Charles]

That's diferent then. If you have a commercial site with a large audience then there's no point in making the site accessible to the blind.

I might point out that normal people, when you draw their attention to the fact that they are inadvertently causing harm, stop doing it and apologize. It's only the cruel and evil among us who reply "But it's not against the law." or "But I'm more important than such concerns."

[garysumpter]

LETS END THIS THREAD HERE SHALL WE.

I registered an hour ago, looking for some simple technical advice and have ended up in a debate over political correctness.

You must be bored wherever you are.

thanks to those who offered uselful advice.

Case Closed. Meeting Adjurned.