Spacer gifs
Mark Pilgrim’s latest accessibility tip concerns spacer images, specifically the need to add blank alt text so as to not confuse non-visual browsers.
Spacer gifs: just say no. Do it with CSS. I don’t believe I’ve found any design so far which uses CSS for positioning and needs spacer images; they’re a necessary evil when using tables for layout. Not that you can necessarily stop doing that, although I have.
The text browser I use, w3m, seems to display an image name even if it has blank alt text, which is annoying. I may have not set a preference right or something — it’s never important enough for me to actually try and fix it.
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