Thanks Egg
I will be using variants. I thought that would be OK as long as I don't start the file names with a number?

I've been on to Xara about the Alt tag issue and hopefully it has forwarded as a feature request.

I had hoped not to use pop-up layers for this one as I have a lot of images and updating them in the future would be a pain.

I think I am probably going to go ahead without alt tags for my galleries and hop I won't be penalised.