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Thread: bold vs. strong, italics vs. emphasis

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From: Chagnon | PubCom
Date: Fri, Dec 14 2012 12:57PM
Subject: bold vs. strong, italics vs. emphasis
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While doing research for a client's project, I stumbled on this article that
attempts to describe the difference between the and tags, and
the and tags in HTML4 and HTML5.

The article: http://www.impressivewebs.com/bold-italic-html5/

Here's what I understand from the author's interpretation of the HTML 4 & 5
specifications:

 and are only for visual formatting, that is to make the text appear
different on the screen. From the spec, "stylistically offset from the
normal prose without conveying any extra importance."

 and are for giving the text more importance. From the spec,
"strong importance for its contents."

How does this interpretation mesh with accessibility? Does it mean that 
and are only stylized and, therefore, not necessary for blind users to
see?

What say thee, oh wise web-AIM ones? I'd like your thoughts on this.

-Bevi Chagnon

- PubCom.com - Trainers, Consultants, Designers, and Developers.

- Print, Web, Acrobat, XML, eBooks, and U.S. Federal Section 508
Accessibility.

- It's our 31st year!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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<http://www.PubCom.com>; www.PubCom.com - Trainers, Consultants, Designers,
Developers.

Print, Web, Acrobat, XML, eBooks, and U.S. Federal Section 508
Accessibility.

New schedule for classes and workshops coming this fall and winter.

- It's our 31st year! -

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Fri, Dec 14 2012 1:05PM
Subject: Re: bold vs. strong, italics vs. emphasis
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2012-12-14 21:57, Chagnon | PubCom wrote:

> While doing research for a client's project, I stumbled on this article that
> attempts to describe the difference between the and tags, and
> the and tags in HTML4 and HTML5.

It's a rather theoretical distinction, with little or no practical impact.

> Here's what I understand from the author's interpretation of the HTML 4 & 5
> specifications:
>
> and are only for visual formatting, that is to make the text appear
> different on the screen. From the spec, "stylistically offset from the
> normal prose without conveying any extra importance."

That adds confusion to the confusion, confusing HTML5 drafts (which are,
in this issue, rather personal inventions by some people) with HTML 4
specifications. HTML5 drafts propose to redefine and in rather
absurd ways, purporting them to be "semantic".

> How does this interpretation mesh with accessibility?

Not much.

> Does it mean that 
> and are only stylized and, therefore, not necessary for blind users to
> see?

By HTML specs, and mean bold face and italics. In practice, they
mean emphasis of some kind. Realistically speaking, browsers and
assistive software should treat them that way. But inline emphasis is
mostly lost anyway.

Out of a habit, I use and for emphasis and and 
only when I really mean typographic formatting. But the world behaves
differently, and I don't blame it.

Yucca

From: Jared Smith
Date: Fri, Dec 14 2012 1:39PM
Subject: Re: bold vs. strong, italics vs. emphasis
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and are for stylistic differences in HTML 4. If the or 
is removed (or is ignored by a screen reader), it should not affect
the meaning of the content. That is, if they are used correctly, which
they very rarely are.

One of the goals of HTML5 is to remove purely stylistic elements, and
instead of invalidating billions of pages that contain and ,
they forced some interesting semantics onto these elements to keep
them in the HTML5 draft. For practical purposes, continue to treat
them like HTML 4 defines them - and for visual styling, 
and for emphasis.

But none of this really makes a heap of difference for accessibility.
Despite being nearly 2 decades old and among the most basic and
commonly used elements, almost all screen readers still ignore all of
these. The screen readers that do anything with these elements treat
all 4 of them the same.

It does bring up an interesting question of what proper screen reader
behavior *SHOULD* be. I'm not sure I agree with Jukka's suggestion
that because these elements are almost always misused that screen
readers should thus treat them all the same. In a perfect world, I
think it would be proper for screen readers to do nothing with and
, read content with an inflection and/or volume increase to
indicate emphasis, and read with an even stronger inflection
and/or volume.

Jared Smith

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Fri, Dec 14 2012 3:42PM
Subject: Re: bold vs. strong, italics vs. emphasis
← Previous message | Next message →

2012-12-14 22:39, Jared Smith wrote:

> and are for stylistic differences in HTML 4.

They denote italic and bold, respectively.

> If the or 
> 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 and ,
> 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 and
> , read content with an inflection and/or volume increase to
> indicate emphasis, and read with an even stronger inflection
> and/or volume.

There was never any good definition of what and mean.
"Emphasis" is such a vague word, and "strong emphasis" is odd - if it's
just a strong form of emphasis, it should be with an attribute. But
in reality, and were never anything but purportedly
"semantic" equivalents of and .

Yucca

From: John E Brandt
Date: Sat, Dec 15 2012 12:07PM
Subject: Re: bold vs. strong, italics vs. emphasis
← Previous message | Next message →

Bevi,

I too was confused about this topic and wrote a blog entry about the
confusion about 18 months ago (reference below). I know the topic was
discuss here in this list then and has been several times in the past as
well.

As you can tell from the comments here now, there is no "official answer" as
to the distinction. I recall that in WAI WCAG 1.0 they began several of the
guidelines with the phrase "until user agents..." indicating the hope
perhaps that someday the technology would catch up with the real world and
solve some the access problems.

As I noted in that old blog entry, "... I can even remember a time when
there was serious talk that these tags would eventually be used by screen
reader software (and all text to speech applications) in a way that would
actually "express" the emphasis in the aural output. But that technological
advancement has not happened (yet)."

Someday...

Here is my old blog entry if you need something to help you sleep...
http://jebswebs.net/blog/2011/06/html5-i-b-em-strong-whats-the-scoop/
Short URL: http://tinyurl.com/3p8xm22

~j

John E. Brandt
www.jebswebs.com
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
207-622-7937
Augusta, Maine, USA

-----Original Message-----
From: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
[mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ] On Behalf Of Chagnon | PubCom
Sent: Friday, December 14, 2012 2:58 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: [WebAIM] bold vs. strong, italics vs. emphasis

While doing research for a client's project, I stumbled on this article that
attempts to describe the difference between the and tags, and
the and tags in HTML4 and HTML5.

The article: http://www.impressivewebs.com/bold-italic-html5/

Here's what I understand from the author's interpretation of the HTML 4 & 5
specifications:

 and are only for visual formatting, that is to make the text appear
different on the screen. From the spec, "stylistically offset from the
normal prose without conveying any extra importance."

 and are for giving the text more importance. From the spec,
"strong importance for its contents."

How does this interpretation mesh with accessibility? Does it mean that 
and are only stylized and, therefore, not necessary for blind users to
see?

What say thee, oh wise web-AIM ones? I'd like your thoughts on this.

-Bevi Chagnon

- PubCom.com - Trainers, Consultants, Designers, and Developers.

- Print, Web, Acrobat, XML, eBooks, and U.S. Federal Section 508
Accessibility.

- It's our 31st year!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

<http://www.PubCom.com>; www.PubCom.com - Trainers, Consultants, Designers,
Developers.

Print, Web, Acrobat, XML, eBooks, and U.S. Federal Section 508
Accessibility.

New schedule for classes and workshops coming this fall and winter.

- It's our 31st year! -

messages to = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =

From: Greg Gamble
Date: Mon, Dec 17 2012 9:36AM
Subject: Re: bold vs. strong, italics vs. emphasis
← Previous message | Next message →

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 ADDRESS REMOVED = [mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ] On Behalf Of Jukka K. Korpela
Sent: Friday, December 14, 2012 2:43 PM
To: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] bold vs. strong, italics vs. emphasis

2012-12-14 22:39, Jared Smith wrote:

> and are for stylistic differences in HTML 4.

They denote italic and bold, respectively.

> If the or 
> 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 and ,
> 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 and
> , read content with an inflection and/or volume increase to
> indicate emphasis, and read with an even stronger inflection
> and/or volume.

There was never any good definition of what and mean.
"Emphasis" is such a vague word, and "strong emphasis" is odd - if it's
just a strong form of emphasis, it should be with an attribute. But
in reality, and were never anything but purportedly
"semantic" equivalents of and .

Yucca

From: chris chandler
Date: Mon, Dec 17 2012 2:17PM
Subject: Re: bold vs. strong, italics vs. emphasis
← Previous message | No next message

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 ADDRESS 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 ADDRESS REMOVED = [mailto:
> = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ] On Behalf Of Jukka K. Korpela
> Sent: Friday, December 14, 2012 2:43 PM
> To: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] bold vs. strong, italics vs. emphasis
>
> 2012-12-14 22:39, Jared Smith wrote:
>
> > and are for stylistic differences in HTML 4.
>
> They denote italic and bold, respectively.
>
> > If the or 
> > 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 and ,
> > 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 and
> > , read content with an inflection and/or volume increase to
> > indicate emphasis, and read with an even stronger inflection
> > and/or volume.
>
> There was never any good definition of what and mean.
> "Emphasis" is such a vague word, and "strong emphasis" is odd - if it's
> just a strong form of emphasis, it should be with an attribute. But
> in reality, and were never anything but purportedly
> "semantic" equivalents of and .
>
>
> Yucca
>
> > > >
> > > >