Very few images are truly decorative. An image can add meaning, mood, or context without providing information. It may be time for WCAG to use a better category.
Devs who don’t know and don’t care will still get a linter error and make it go away. You’re also forgetting how much you know here: I had to sit through a doctor doing a web search for “assistive technology” the other day, that would be just as meaningless.
My instinct is that we can move towards abstract elements (HTML or components) that either use images decoratively or are explicitly called “picture.” Yes, that always exists, I mean making that more of an industry default. The language there conveys the purpose better, in my mind: an image may be utilitarian, a picture is for communicating something. If it’s “worth a thousand words,” it needs words, right?
Devs who don’t know and don’t care will still get a linter error and make it go away. You’re also forgetting how much you know here: I had to sit through a doctor doing a web search for “assistive technology” the other day, that would be just as meaningless.
My instinct is that we can move towards abstract elements (HTML or components) that either use images decoratively or are explicitly called “picture.” Yes, that always exists, I mean making that more of an industry default. The language there conveys the purpose better, in my mind: an image may be utilitarian, a picture is for communicating something. If it’s “worth a thousand words,” it needs words, right?