Alt text for images are important in email, too

Raymond Chen

Apparently the IT department gave up on getting everybody to read email in plain text, and other service departments at Microsoft have moved beyond simply using HTML for markup and started adding banner images to the top of each email message. Because the best way to promote your brand to other parts of the company is to stick a banner logo at the top of every message.

Here’s the HTML for one such banner image, with line breaks inserted for sanity.

<img width=707 height=63 id="Picture_x0020_2"
src="cid:image001.png@01CB0944.B4771400"
alt="Description: Description: Description: Description:
Description: Description: Description: Microsoft Real Estate
and Facilities">

The great thing about the absurd alt text is that that’s what appears in the autopreview window and in the email notification pop-up.

But wait, it gets worse. The second image in the message (a giant circled-i icon indicating that this is an informational message) has as its alt text "Description: Description: Description: Description: Description: Description: cid:image003.jpg@01CAFC55.BC923A80". Yeah, like that explains the image clearly.

Maybe they were just taking a lead from the boss.

No lesson today, just venting.

Raymond Chen

Follow