Mmmm, this seems pretty subjective and not generally good advice. For example, if you're building a header for a website. You of course wouldn't need the other

Mmmm, this seems pretty subjective and not generally good advice. For example, if you're building a header for a website. You of course wouldn't need the other images, if javascript wasn't enabled. But if you were building a slideshow of photos you took, you would. Also, there's nothing wrong with using an 'a' tag for it's defaults. You're not going to trip up screen readers and, depending on your style needs, might save some bites on not having to declare the css for the anchor. What you need to focus on is graceful degradation. Does it do what you want it to do as browser functionality degrades?