Question about Alt Tags

[GRRB]

Hi Guys hope you can help as i am scratchin my head over here...
All of a sudden Alt Tags have started appearing on my site.
there were never any before for some reason but now they are on everything.
in some ways its quite good. for buttons like the refresh in shopping cart for example but in others its quite annoying like on the logo and home image etc.
is there a way to turn them off across the board or is there a way to turn off individually?
the only thing i did recently was optimize all my jpgs and reupload them, and now BOOM alt tags all over the place!!!
any one gotta any words of wisdom?
thank you so very very much
regards
reece x

[Kim]

The ALT tags have always been there - Did you recently change browsers?

BTW- you do NOT want to turn them off or remove them for usability and other purposes.

[GRRB]

The ALT tags have always been there - Did you recently change browsers?

BTW- you do NOT want to turn them off or remove them for usability and other purposes.

uh oh...i have found the php files with them in and i have been changing the names of them and for some i have been deleting them...
i have just removed the bits between '' ;;
for example alt=''img_home1''
has now become alt=''''
is this a bad idea???

[schoolboy]

is this a bad idea???

Probably one of the worst ideas ever...

You'd do well to do some research on ALT tags, how they dramatically enhance SEO, and how they contribute to VALIDATION.

Removing ALT tags is extremely foolish.

[GRRB]

Probably one of the worst ideas ever...

You'd do well to do some research on ALT tags, how they dramatically enhance SEO, and how they contribute to VALIDATION.

Removing ALT tags is extremely foolish.

is seo search engine optimization?
if it is then do i really need alt tage that say things like img_home or logo
?

by removing them and leaving '' '' have i damaged the cart?

what is validation?

sorry for my stupidity but this is the closing stages of a very long build and i am so tired now.

thank you very much

[g1smd]

Valid HTML requires the alt attribute to be present, but the value can be blank or empty, like alt="".