[Vinnl]

> the ideal scenario is a description of what is in the image.

I'd say the ideal scenario is conveying the information that the image conveys. If there is no new information in the image (for example, it might be redundant with the username next to it), it's better to explicitly add an empty alt tag, as far as I'm aware.

[reitanqild]

Adding an empty alt tag is often the correct thing yes.

Rule of thumb: if someone read the page out to you, would you prefer if they read that alt tag you are thinking of adding or not?

[Wowfunhappy]

I wish omitting alt text was the equivalent of empty alt text.

Nothing else works this way. If a page doesn't have a favicon, you don't add an empty icon href.

I know empty alt text is preferred because otherwise, screen readers will usually revert to reading the file name. But I wish screen readers didn't do that.

[perilunar]

> If a page doesn't have a favicon, you don't add an empty icon href.

You can though — it prevents a 404 error being logged in the browser console.

e.g. <link rel="icon" href="data:,">

[reitanqild]

I always thought it was standardized that way in an effort to get people to care about accessibility.

But FWIK it might just be because someone on the standards committee wanted it that way.

[Wowfunhappy]

Does that work though? If you don't care about accessibility, you can still leave out the tags. Screen readers will then default to reading the file name, which I'd argue is worse than skipping over images in the general case.

[reitanqild]

It probably worked better when everyone validated their pages and (I think) html quality used to be a ranking factor in Google.