Hacker News Reader

I'm curious why you think that forcing people to write alt="" is going to improve accessibility?

Because that’s how screen readers know the image is decorative. It literally is/improves accessibility.

Additionally, the developer is more likely to actually write alt text when it's not decorative.

Although I must admit, I've also seen such rules leading to developers writing alt text for decorative images, and I'm not sure if that's much better.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com