How should an assistive technology treat a decorative image according to the guidelines?

• A. It should have an empty accessible name or description, or be ignored by AT.
• B. It must have a visible caption for context.
• C. It should always be announced to the user.
• D. It should be duplicated in text form.

Answer: (A)

Decorative images are visuals that don’t convey information needed to understand the content. When assistive technology encounters them, they should not interrupt or distract the user. Using an empty accessible name or description (for example, alt="" in HTML) or marking the image as decorative so AT ignores it keeps the focus on meaningful content and avoids unnecessary narration. If the image did convey information, you would provide appropriate alt text to describe its purpose.

Other options add noise or redundancy: a visible caption implies there is informative context, announcing every decorative image would be disruptive, and duplicating the image’s content in text would clutter the experience without adding value.