Is it important to use img alt attributes?

Question

For those of you who are i18n, are you using the alt attribute in the img tags? Is it really worth it?

Answer 1

Well, I think if you would like your site to be truly i18n'd, then yes.

This may be an additional headache, but some visually impaired people thank you :)

Also, are you also using i18n JavaScript strings?

Answer 2

If you decide to translate your alt tags and find yourself needing control and / or just getting the actual translation that we have (which I like to think, obviously :) a pretty cool tool called String - http://mygengo.com/string

The line is great for not just managing translations, where you can invite others to projects to help with translation, but you can also order translations directly in the service. We integrated our API into String to demonstrate our API and the ability to see status updates for numerous (100 ... 1000) tasks translated by real people!

If you are interested in the API itself, we recently held a competition for an award with some winners on several platforms (Wordpress, Django, etc.): http://mygengo.com/services/api/lab/winners/

Just thought I'd share.