@jgmac1106 Answer from an actual screen reader user. As long as you put the description in there somewhere, who cares? I mean the person shouldn't waste their time with a blank attribute. Yeah it probably won't validate, but having it in the caption should still work.
@jgmac1106I hope you don’t mind me jumping in as another blind screen reader user. I’d say that ideally you should consider putting more of a description in the alt tag than the caption provides. Sometimes, context or other interesting details are lost with captions. Someone might have a caption like “John Smith and his dog”, but the picture is John and his dog playing in the snow, at the beach, hiking, asleep on a sofa, etc. Captions are generally supplementary/clarifying information, but a lot is still be lost to the screen reader user if captions are all we get. HTH!
@jgmac1106 thank you. I mixed up conversations. You both were helping me and my student.
She is new to web design and trying to start an online campus support group.
@jgmac1106 I am learning so much teaching.
@jgmac1106 Yes. If the image caption already has the description, then you'd want to leave the alt attribute blank, but it still needs to be there. alt="".
@jgmac1106 OK, then I wouldn't worry about the alt text. Like I said if the description is in there somewhere, it should still work fine.
@jgmac1106 As in it may not validate if you don't put the alt text in, but having the descriptions in the title is still a way of doing it.
@jgmac1106 Since she's putting the descriptions in the title, the only benefit of having alt text in that case is SEO.