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Re: Bold Italics

for

From: Tim Harshbarger
Date: Oct 1, 2012 2:45PM

I don't know of a screen reader that will identify if text has a strong or emphasis tag applied to it.

However, most all screen readers are able to identify if text is bolded or italicized. How they do that can differ between screen readers and even by user preference.

One thing to keep in mind though is that I don't think any screen reader automatically identifies bolded or italicized text by default. I think in just about every case, the user either needs to use keyboard commands to ask for that information or make changes to the screen reader's default settings.

So, I suspect technically bolded or italicized text is accessible, while text styled as strong or emphasized is not.

As far as Word styles go, I believe it is only possible to apply a single style to text. If you want to use a style to both bold and emphasize text, you'll either need to alter an existing style or create a new style. If someone is just reading the document in Word, I would suggest giving it a new meaningful style name. For example, JAWS will say the name of an applied style if that feature is turned on--which should give the user the necessary information.
Though if you are porting the contents of the Word document to other formats, you might have to do something to ensure that information translates across to the other formats.

Another option might be to use additional typographical conventions to help with identifying text. For example, sometimes I will both italicize and place double quotes around an article title if it appears in a paragraph.

I hope some of this information helps.

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Chagnon | PubCom
Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2012 3:40 PM
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List'
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Bold Italics

I'm the original poster, so let me explain the situation my client is in.

An entire phrase will be in bold to emphasize it from the rest of the body
text and it will use the <strong> character style in MS Word.
Within the phrase is a book title that grammatically needs to be in
italics/emphasis.

However, when we apply <emphasis> to the book title that already has
<strong> applied (this is Word styles, not HTML code), the <strong> is
removed for the book title and only <emphasis> is left. With Word styles,
it's either / or: either <strong> or <emphasis>, not both.

This might not be a problem for screen readers because they'll use voice #1
for the first part with <strong>, voice #2 for the <emphasis> book title,
and revert back to voice #1 for the rest of the <strong> text and the user
will hear the difference between the 3 sections/

But this content is not just for accessibility: the same content is being
used for print publishing, web publishing, and a centralized XML-based
database. The book title needs to have both <strong> and <emphasis> applied
in Word (which is where the content is created), not either <strong> or
<emphasis>.

So to rephrase my original question:
Is there a defined tag for both <strong> + <emphasis> that is compliant with
WCAG 2.0? If so, does it have a matching character style in Word?

This doesn't look hopeful, given that screen readers don't even address
regular <strong> and <emphasis> very well!

- Bevi Chagnon

- PubCom.com - Trainers, Consultants, Designers, and Developers.
- Print, Web, Acrobat, XML, eBooks, and U.S. Federal Section 508
Accessibility.
- It's our 31st year!


-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of David Ashleydale
Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2012 4:01 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Bold Italics

... As to the original poster's question, I don't see why a certain word or
phrase would need to be doubly emphasized with both italics and bold. The
only case where I could see doing this would be if I were going for a
particular visual style that had nothing to do with semantics. For example,
I might want to emphasize the letter "I" in a sentence using italics, but
because it's such a small character, maybe I would consider bolding it, too,
just to make it stand out more, visually.

David Ashleydale