Great thing about web standards is they aint.

The alt tag for images is there for the visually impaired.  The idea is if they can’t see the screen then their text-to-speech reader can read out the alt (alternate) tag for them instead.  So, the W3C recommendation (y’know, the people that did the whole HTML thang) is to only have an alt tag when the image matters.  If it’s just for visual layout or eye candy then you make it blank.

So I was doing a bit of search engine optimisation.  One of the tips? “Your keyword is not present in the first 3 ALT image attributes on your page! Put your keyword in one of these ALTs as they are considered more important than the rest of ALTs on your page.”

So to increase my page rankings I’m supposed to say a big f’you to the visually impaired?  Nice work search engine people!

On a different note; today is the first day of the rest of my life.  It’s also the first day of re-unemployment.  I must do that business development thing.