Rule 3: Alt texts

The page contains a large number of images, mostly with adequate or tolerable alt texts:

• There are small images for layout between the language links (the first set of navigational links). They have alt="". However, alt="|" would be better, since the logical role of the image is that of a separator.
• Other images used for layout purposes adequately have alt="".
• The images that act as language links have the name of the language in English as the alt text, e.g. alt="Arabic". This is quite acceptable.
• The image containing the WHO symbol and logo and acting as a link to the main page has alt="WHO Home". This is tolerable, but as mentioned above, a longer text would be better. As written, the image and the alt text are not really equivalent.
• The link “printable version” is preceded by a small icon that is also a link – to the same page. This is not good practice, and it also implies that the first of these links is an image with an empty alt attribute. It would be better to make the icon and the text one link (<a href="print.html"><img … alt="" border="0" />printable version</a>).

Checking all those alt attributes is somewhat awkward. The extensive use of layout images makes it harder to find other images and check their alt attributes. The page would benefit from using a more modern approach to visual formatting, style sheets (CSS).