{"id":8143,"date":"2012-03-08T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-08T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2012\/03\/08\/alt-text-for-images-are-important-in-email-too\/"},"modified":"2012-03-08T07:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-03-08T07:00:00","slug":"alt-text-for-images-are-important-in-email-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20120308-00\/?p=8143","title":{"rendered":"Alt text for images are important in email, too"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nApparently the IT department gave up on\n<a HREF=\"http:\/\/blogs.msdn.com\/b\/oldnewthing\/archive\/2009\/06\/09\/9710985.aspx\">\ngetting everybody to read email in plain text<\/a>,\nand other service departments at Microsoft have moved beyond\nsimply using HTML for markup\nand started adding banner images to the top of each email message.\nBecause the best way to promote your brand to other parts\nof the company is to stick a banner logo at the top of every message.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nHere&#8217;s the HTML for one such banner image,\nwith line breaks inserted for sanity.\n<\/p>\n<pre>\n&lt;img width=707 height=63 id=\"Picture_x0020_2\"\nsrc=\"cid:image001.png@01CB0944.B4771400\"\nalt=\"Description: Description: Description: Description:\nDescription: Description: Description: Microsoft Real Estate\nand Facilities\"&gt;\n<\/pre>\n<p>\nThe great thing about the absurd alt text is that\nthat&#8217;s what appears in the autopreview window\nand in the email notification pop-up.\n<\/p>\n<table BORDER=\"1\" STYLE=\"border-collapse: collapse\">\n<tr>\n<td STYLE=\"background: infobackground;color: infotext\">\n    <b>BUILDING NOTICE: Buildings 8&#8230;<\/b><br \/>\n    Description: Description: Description:<br \/>\n    Description: Description: Description:&#8230;\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>\nBut wait, it gets worse.\nThe second image in the message (a giant\n<a HREF=\"http:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Circle-information.svg\">\ncircled-i<\/a> icon indicating that this is an informational message)\nhas as its alt text\n<code>\"Description: Description: Description: Description: Description:\nDescription: cid:image003.jpg@01CAFC55.BC923A80\"<\/code>.\nYeah, like that explains the image clearly.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nMaybe they were just\n<a HREF=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=KMU0tzLwhbE\">\ntaking a lead from the boss<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nNo lesson today, just venting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-8143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-other"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}