Sometimes it’s useful to know if images are enabled in the user’s browser, so that you can adjust your CSS and/or JavaScript to make sure that important content is not hidden and that the page is still usable even if images aren’t loaded.
Steve Faulkner describes one example of such a scenario in Detecting if images are disabled in browsers – using an image to convey information that is also available in text that is positioned off-screen. In a CSS on + images off scenario, sighted users won’t get any information.
It’s often possible to write your markup and CSS in a way that avoids this problem, but it isn’t always practical. Hence knowing whether images will be displayed or not is helpful.
Posted in Accessibility, CSS, JavaScript.
Copyright © Roger Johansson