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Thread: RE: v. and v.

Number of posts in this thread: 4 (In chronological order)

From: julian.rickards@ndm.gov.on.ca
Date: Fri, Sep 05 2003 9:16AM
Subject: RE: v. and v. 
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I too have been surprised by the deprecation lists: is gone but 
and are not, yet all three are presentational. However, and
 have a logical significance and would/should be interpretted by speech
readers with a different voice (of one sort or another) than and 
which are only visual and speech readers would/should not read them any
different than unstyled text.

Does not FP have the option of inserting in place of and 
for ?

Jules

> -----Original Message-----
> From: jeb [mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ]
> Sent: Friday, September 05, 2003 10:56 AM
> To: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
> Subject: v. and v. 
>
>
> Earlier in August there was an interesting discussion
> regarding the "bold"
> and "italics" issue. I just re-read the archives and still
> have questions.
>
> In reading my HTML 4 Bible, it notes that although and
> have not been
> deprecated, CSS is recommended. There is no similar statement
> for 
> and . However, pretty much all browsers render and
> exactly
> the same way (ditto with and ). Someone in the
> archive noted that
> "all browsers" can handle while a number of browsers
> still have problems
> with CSS.
>
> That discussion got into aural style sheets and issues
> related to how to do
> the CSS code. It never answered my concern...
>
> So, my question is simply, what difference does it make - if
> you use and
> ? From my reading, it is not deprecated, it doesn't
> apparently upset any
> AT devices, both can have their attributed changed with CSS content.
>
> My reason for asking is that some accessibility validators
> programs are now
> citing the use of and with a "warning" statement.
> Because there may
> be many such "errors" it stops the validation process because
> some arbitrary
> maximum number of errors has been reached.
>
> I use FrontPage 2002 as my authoring package and understand
> that there are a
> number of things I have to do to make a standard FP file
> accessible (most of
> which I have mastered), but I am not happy with the prospect
> of having to go
> back and change all of my 's to s, just to placate
> some "silly
> interpretation." So is it a "silly interpretation" or a valid
> concern, and
> can someone explain why these distinctions are important?
>
> Many thanks.
>
> jeb
>
> John E. Brandt
> Augusta, ME 04330
>
> = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = <mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
> www.jebswebs.com <http://www.jebswebs.com>;
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ----
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, suspend, or view list archives,
> visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/
>

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From: jeb
Date: Fri, Sep 05 2003 10:00AM
Subject: RE: v. and v. 
← Previous message | Next message →

Thank you to all who have answered my questions (rather quickly I note!).

Unfortunately, I don't like your answers <grin>. I was thinking it was
merely a situation of search and replace all my s with s - etc.
Now, I realize that I need to actually read all of this stuff and determine
if it is something that is merely presentational or something requiring
emphasis. Yuck!

To answer Julian's question, no, the current version of FrontPage always
renders the and - However, I just discovered something very
interesting. After I convert all of the s to I can then "remove"
the bolding (same thing with the italics) using the appropriate button icon
on the tool bar. What is happening in the code is FP leaves in the 
or and simply adds a font-style element returning the text to "normal."
If I click the button again, it replaces the or .

BTW, I checked on a page that a colleague of mine made using Dreamweaver and
his bolding is created with CSS. I'm guessing that that is an internal
feature of Dreamweaver. FP is coming out with a new version next month -
hopefully there will be some major improvements - or perhaps it is time to
make the switch to DW.

So, it looks like I have my work cut out for me. Thanks everyone!

jeb

John E. Brandt
Augusta, ME 04330

= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = <mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
www.jebswebs.com <http://www.jebswebs.com>;

-----Original Message-----
From: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
[mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ]
Sent: Friday, September 05, 2003 11:09 AM
To: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
Subject: RE: v. and v. 

I too have been surprised by the deprecation lists: is gone but 
and are not, yet all three are presentational. However, and
 have a logical significance and would/should be interpretted by speech
readers with a different voice (of one sort or another) than and 
which are only visual and speech readers would/should not read them any
different than unstyled text.

Does not FP have the option of inserting in place of and 
for ?

Jules

> -----Original Message-----
> From: jeb [mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ]
> Sent: Friday, September 05, 2003 10:56 AM
> To: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
> Subject: v. and v. 
>
>
> Earlier in August there was an interesting discussion
> regarding the "bold"
> and "italics" issue. I just re-read the archives and still
> have questions.
>
> In reading my HTML 4 Bible, it notes that although and
> have not been
> deprecated, CSS is recommended. There is no similar statement
> for 
> and . However, pretty much all browsers render and
> exactly
> the same way (ditto with and ). Someone in the
> archive noted that
> "all browsers" can handle while a number of browsers
> still have problems
> with CSS.
>
> That discussion got into aural style sheets and issues
> related to how to do
> the CSS code. It never answered my concern...
>
> So, my question is simply, what difference does it make - if
> you use and
> ? From my reading, it is not deprecated, it doesn't
> apparently upset any
> AT devices, both can have their attributed changed with CSS content.
>
> My reason for asking is that some accessibility validators
> programs are now
> citing the use of and with a "warning" statement.
> Because there may
> be many such "errors" it stops the validation process because
> some arbitrary
> maximum number of errors has been reached.
>
> I use FrontPage 2002 as my authoring package and understand
> that there are a
> number of things I have to do to make a standard FP file
> accessible (most of
> which I have mastered), but I am not happy with the prospect
> of having to go
> back and change all of my 's to s, just to placate
> some "silly
> interpretation." So is it a "silly interpretation" or a valid
> concern, and
> can someone explain why these distinctions are important?
>
> Many thanks.
>
> jeb
>
> John E. Brandt
> Augusta, ME 04330
>
> = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = <mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
> www.jebswebs.com <http://www.jebswebs.com>;
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ----
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, suspend, or view list archives,
> visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/
>

----
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From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Fri, Sep 05 2003 10:00AM
Subject: RE: v. and v. 
← Previous message | Next message →

On Fri, 5 Sep 2003 = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = wrote:

> I too have been surprised by the deprecation lists: is gone but 
> and are not, yet all three are presentational.

This question has been discussed at length on different forums, and I'm
afraid its significance has been exaggerated. In practical terms, it has
little impact on accessibility, or other things. But in principle,
we should use for emphasis, for strong emphasis, and
restrict the use of and (and ) to the rare cases where we
really want to say something about the font _only_.

The markup, and to a lesser degree , can be characterized as
semi-presentational. Sometimes is the most adequate markup available.
My favorite example is the scientific names of organisms, which are by a
well-established convention written in italics whenever possible. It's not
emphasis, and it's not just presentational in the same sense as you might
wish to render something in italics just because it fits your esthetic
design better.

> However, and
> have a logical significance and would/should be interpretted by speech
> readers with a different voice (of one sort or another) than and 
> which are only visual and speech readers would/should not read them any
> different than unstyled text.

In principle, you are right. But since is so widely used for strong
emphasis, a good practical browser probably should take it as really
meaning . On the other hand, I have heard from blind people who
use speech browsers a lot that they don't like to hear any word-level
emphasis in the midst if speech - it's just too disturbing. And after my
attempts to learn to listen to fast synthesized speech (which is essential
for efficient aural browsing), I tend to agree.

Thus, I think authors should not rely on or markup. It's
good to use them (to a reasonable extent), but the page content should
still make sense even when spoken so that such markup is ignored.

And I have drawn the conclusion that it is often better to use low-level
headings than to emphasize words inside running text. In fact it's often
visually better too. Headings are different, since we can expect a speech
browser to pause before a heading, read the heading somehow emphatically,
pause a little again, and proceed to reading normally. This is probably
better than having emphasis inside normal text.

--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

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From: Stephanie Sullivan
Date: Fri, Sep 05 2003 2:45PM
Subject: Re: v. and v. 
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on 9/5/03 11:56 AM, jeb at = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = profoundly spewed forth their
very articulate thoughts:

> BTW, I checked on a page that a colleague of mine made using Dreamweaver and
> his bolding is created with CSS. I'm guessing that that is an internal
> feature of Dreamweaver. FP is coming out with a new version next month -
> hopefully there will be some major improvements - or perhaps it is time to
> make the switch to DW.

Dreamweaver has a new version coming out soon and has excellent CSS support
within it now. For a version (or two) it's been possible to set your
preferences to use and instead of and ...

The support for CSS-P, which I prefer to use in accessible sites, is
excellent now... Not perfect yet, but pretty awesome. :)

It may "pull you over" yet, John... ;-)

Stephanie Sullivan

CommunityMX Team Member :: http://www.communitymx.com
CommunityMX

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