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Re: Blank paragraphs

for

From: Lars Ballieu Christensen
Date: Nov 21, 2022 2:13PM

IMHO it's fairly clear: correct semantic and structural markup means that everything is marked up for what it is. A white-space-empty-line is not a paragraph (which is usually defined as one or more sentences that are organized and coherent, and are all related to a single topic) and therefore it is not acceptable to mark up white-space-empty-lines as paragraphs.

Venligst/Kind regards

Lars
----
Lars Ballieu Christensen
Rådgiver/Adviser, Ph.D., M.Sc., Sensus ApS
Specialister i tilgængelighed/Accessibility Consultants
Tel: +45 48 22 10 03 – Mobil: +45 40 32 68 23 - Skype: Ballieu
Mail: <EMAIL REMOVED> – Web: https://www.sensus.dk

Vi arbejder for et tilgængeligt og rummeligt informationssamfund
Working for an accessible and inclusive information society



On 21/11/2022, 21.56, "WebAIM-Forum on behalf of Kevin Prince" < <EMAIL REMOVED> on behalf of <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

One of my personal bugbears, in Word and the Web, is the use of a carriage return to provide space (It should be done using styles/css).

We discussed it at a team meeting and our screenreader user was horrified – “How would I know when a paragraph ends?”

He didn't know about navigating by paragraph with his screenreader. My position remains that anything we write for a wider audience should use styles for spacing and there's a responsibility on AT users to learn their AT. It doesn't help that 99% of the world thinks tapping return twice is what you do at the end of a paragraph but we can work on that.

If he wants an empty paragraph in documents written for him then I'sll do that as a reasonable accommodation while gently helping him move along.

Thoughts?


Kevin


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Kevin Prince

Product Accessibility & Usability Consultant



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fostermoore.com

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