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Re: bold vs. strong, italics vs. emphasis

for

From: chris chandler
Date: Dec 17, 2012 2:17PM


Bold and Italic are purely visual indicators -- I don't know of any
guidance given anywhere regarding tone or volume or pitch to indicate how
these things should be read.

So why don't the readers just read "bold/end bold" or "italic/end italic"
or "emphasis/end emphasis" ??

-cc


On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 8:36 AM, Greg Gamble < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> I was under the impression bolding is used to have something standout ...
> to make sure it's read. While emphasis is something important to know, but
> not necessarily part of the subject being discussed.
>
> Greg Gamble
> SBCTC - Olympia | Information Services
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto:
> <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Jukka K. Korpela
> Sent: Friday, December 14, 2012 2:43 PM
> To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] bold vs. strong, italics vs. emphasis
>
> 2012-12-14 22:39, Jared Smith wrote:
>
> > <i> and <b> are for stylistic differences in HTML 4.
>
> They denote italic and bold, respectively.
>
> > If the <i> or <b>
> > is removed (or is ignored by a screen reader), it should not affect
> > the meaning of the content.
>
> That's a wild assumption. Italic and bold are used for a reason. It
> might be just styling, or something else. Most often, in the real world,
> they mean emphasis of some kind.
>
> > One of the goals of HTML5 is to remove purely stylistic elements, and
> > instead of invalidating billions of pages that contain <i> and <b>,
> > they forced some interesting semantics onto these elements to keep
> > them in the HTML5 draft.
>
> They can't really force anything. The "interesting" semantics are just
> poor fantasy.
>
> > But none of this really makes a heap of difference for accessibility.
>
> Indeed, but that's because inline emphasis is mostly irrelevant.
>
> > Despite being nearly 2 decades old and among the most basic and
> > commonly used elements, almost all screen readers still ignore all of
> > these.
>
> Italic and bolding are centuries old, rather than just two decades. But
> this does not change the situation: there isn't much more than screen
> readers could do than ignore such things.
>
> > In a perfect world, I
> > think it would be proper for screen readers to do nothing with <i> and
> > <b>, read <em> content with an inflection and/or volume increase to
> > indicate emphasis, and read <strong> with an even stronger inflection
> > and/or volume.
>
> There was never any good definition of what <em> and <strong> mean.
> "Emphasis" is such a vague word, and "strong emphasis" is odd - if it's
> just a strong form of emphasis, it should be <em> with an attribute. But
> in reality, <em> and <strong> were never anything but purportedly
> "semantic" equivalents of <i> and <b>.
>
>
> Yucca
>
> > > >
> > > >