about.php is missing alt descriptions

[igorradovanov]

The images inside the about.php file are missing alt descriptions.

Example:

<div class="column about__image is-vertically-aligned-center is-edge-to-edge">
    <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/5.9/list-view.png" alt="" />
</div>

This should be avoided in the future in order to provide a better accessibility experience for the new WordPress versions.

[audrasjb]

Hello @igorradovanov and thank you for opening this ticket,

The assumption of the About page team was that these images are illustrative only. If they are illustrative, then we shouldn't add any alt text. See this decision tree for further details: ​https://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/images/decision-tree/

[ryokuhi]

Thank you again @igorradovanov for opening this ticket, which was discussed today during the accessibility team's bug-scrub.

We monitored the entire creation process of the About Page: for what is worth, I also asked myself your same question.
It's really important to add alt texts to images, but not all images need an alt description. In this case, there is no information in the images that isn't already conveyed in the surrounding text, so these images are decorative and, as such, the alt text must be present, but empty.

As this is not a bug, I'm closing this ticket as invalid.