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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.