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Re: Bold Italics

for

From: Karen Mardahl
Date: Sep 26, 2012 9:13AM


This article taught me that bold and italic, regardless of markup choice,
was ignored by screen readers:
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2008/02/screen-readers-lack-emphasis/
However, the article is from 2008. Maybe things have changed since then.

Like Chris and Sarah, I'd question what the purpose of bold plus italic is.
That is what I would worry about first of all. Should it be a heading
instead? Should it highlight something that should be in a list? I'd look
at the content and wonder what was to be conveyed to the reader. That's
what we technical writers do. (smile)

Regards, Karen Mardahl

On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 4:45 PM, Bourne, Sarah (ITD) <
<EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> For as long as I've known, JAWS does not make any differentiation for bold
> or italics text by default, at least on web pages. Perhaps Word is
> different? I did a little poking around on the Freedom Scientific website,
> and found a handy (not!) 20 step process for customizing the speech sounds
> schemes so it will speak bold in a deeper voice. Has anybody on this list
> done this, or know of someone who has?
>
> I agree with Chris that the key question is "why" it has to be bold and
> italic for sighted users. If it's because it's in another language or
> included in a glossary or has some other necessary semantic value, you will
> need to find a way of presenting that value other than use of italics
> and/or bold alone. Otherwise - in practical terms - it doesn't matter to a
> screen reader user.
>
> Sarah E. Bourne
> Director of Assistive Technology &
> Mass.Gov Chief Technology Strategist
> Information Technology Division
> Commonwealth of Massachusetts
> 1 Ashburton Pl. rm 1601 Boston MA 02108
> 617-626-4502
> <EMAIL REMOVED>
> http://www.mass.gov/itd
>
> > > >