Gary Illyes from Google said that it is "sorta ok" to remove alt attributes from images only when if there is relevant text around the image that helps describe the image. But I wouldn't remove the alt attribute because Gary then added doing so "might have significant impact on Google Images traffic."
He wrote this on Twitter and said "Imo if the text around the image is relevant, leaving the alt attributes blank is sorta ok. Search engines would absolutely have less data from where they can infer what the image is about so at least in some cases that might have significant impact on Google Images traffic."
Why in the world would you want to remove alt attributes? Ryan Jones said he has some people telling him that the text is redundant to the text around the images and those that use screen readers find it less efficient for them.
Here are the tweets:
Imo if the text around the image is relevant, leaving the alt attributes blank is sorta ok. Search engines would absolutely have less data from where they can infer what the image is about so at least in some cases that might have significant impact on Google Images traffic.
— Gary "鯨理" Illyes (@methode) May 29, 2019
Interesting - isn't' it?
Forum discussion at Twitter.
