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Re: Bold Italics

for

From: Sailesh Panchang
Date: Oct 1, 2012 3:08PM

Well I have seen a word like "Caution" or "WARNING" in a different
eye-catching color as a prefix for a sentence or two of text on a Web
page I was testing a while ago.
This will not fail as 'use of color alone' issue ... as it is in text.
But it helps visual identification. Screen reader users are at a disadvantage.
Likewise, content that is bold or in italics or tagged as em or strong
helps the sighted user but ordinarily does not help the screen reader
user... as Tim pointed out.
Again it would be good if AT would render it differently or the screen
reader could use a quick-nav feature to move to such text.
Screen reader makers should include this in their list of to-do things.
Content marked up as EM or STRONG becomes an accessibility issue if it
is used for section headings ... these should be marked up with an
h<n> tag and maybe CSS as needed.
Any different take?
Sailesh Panchang


On 10/1/12, Tim Harshbarger < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> 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.
>
>