WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: <strong> vs <em>

for

From: Rebecca Ballard
Date: Feb 13, 2007 3:50PM

Hi all,

Just to clarify my earlier comments, screen readers (or at least Jaws) _can_
differentiate, it's just that most users don't switch the facility on.


Rebecca

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-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of John Foliot -
Stanford Online Accessibility Program
Sent: 13 February 2007 20:21
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List'
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] <strong> vs <em>

Hunt, Jan wrote:
>
> I felt kind of stupid telling folks in my department to use <strong>
> and <em> instead of <b> or <i> (where appropriate) so the screen
> readers would place inflection on that text, only to find out that
> screen readers ignore <strong> <em> <b> and <i>. One day, while
> listening to a page, it dawned on me that there was no inflection
> created by using any of those tags.

While the current crop of screen reading software may not differentiate
between these elements, there is nothing to say that someday some tool
*will*, and you should never feel stupid about preaching/teaching best
practices, and backwards compatibility

My $0.02

JF