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Re: - Blank paragraphs

for

From: L Snider
Date: Nov 21, 2022 2:36PM

My personal view, I would say authors need to learn more about making PDFs
more accessible. Headings are important, and using them in order is very
important (WCAG can say what it likes but I listen to the screen reader
users I know who rely on this technology every day and they want numbered
headings in the right order).

Most of the every day screen reader users I know dislike the blank
paragraphs...think of how much time every day you spend trying to read
everything from social media, emails, websites, apps to an e-book to read
before bed and much of it is problematic. It only takes a few minutes to
artifact blank P tags in a PDF, in fact it is one of the easiest things we
can do with a PDF :)

Cheers

Lisa

On Mon, Nov 21, 2022 at 5:02 PM Hayman, Douglass < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
wrote:

> Kevin,
>
> I think that like skipping heading levels, having those blank "P' tags can
> be problematic. If one is on a web page and hits "2" with NVDA and it says
> no next heading level 2, I wouldn't imagine people would then try "3", "4",
> "5", or "6". Sure, they could hit "H" and hear "no next heading" but I've
> seen several PDF files that have a third of a page of single "P" tags which
> read "blank, blank, blank" whereas not being there, it jumps to the next
> tagged content.
>
> Not sure if you're getting at both authors to do the right thing as well
> as AT users to know their tech?
>
> Doug Hayman
> IT Accessibility Coordinator
> Information Technology
> Olympic College
> <EMAIL REMOVED>
> (360) 475-7632
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of
> Kevin Prince
> Sent: Monday, November 21, 2022 12:56 PM
> To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
> Subject: [EXTERNAL] - [WebAIM] Blank paragraphs
>
> CAUTION: This email came from a non-OC system or external source. Beware
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>
> 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'll 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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