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Originally Posted by bluesage
You can, but don't think your html will validate following W3C standards. Not that Firefox uses "Title" instead of "alt", so its wise to have both in as your image attributes.
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I disagree, conditionally.
Firstly, you need to forget about the tooltip effect of the title attribute (or alt attribute in the case of IE). It's best to primarily think of the alt and title attributes and their content purely in terms of the information they convey to the user.
If the image content doesn't convey all that it should, then and only then, is is a fair idea to add a title attribute to expand upon the information conveyed in the image itself (or the alt attribute).
The correct attribute to use would be the longdesc, but in practise, coders and usability bods seem to have settled on the title attribute as sufficient.
For image links, the alt attribute should convey the same content of the image. If the link would benefit from additional info, then add a title attribute to the anchor, not the image.
The title attribute should never replicate the content of the alt attribute.
The alt attribute should replicate the information conveyed in the image itself (this covers both 'images on' and 'images off' users, sighted and unsighted users). By adding a title attribute which replicates that information again, you're simply adding bloat to the code without really benefiting the user.
In terms of how screenreaders and other AT software interpret the various configurations of anchor text, anchor titles, alt attributes and img title text, a search over at
Accessify Forum would be a good idea. It's a topic which crops up from time to time.