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A11y Slackers Gitter Channel Archive 5th of March 2017

What fresh hell is THIS now? - Patrick Lauke
  1. zakim-robot
    @zakim-robot
    Mar 05 18:48
    [sophieschoice_slack] With genealogical information on a website, would you indicate with <i> or <em> the first name of a person when given all his names?
  2. zakim-robot
    @zakim-robot
    Mar 05 18:53
    [sophieschoice_slack] or would <strong> be the better option here?
  3. zakim-robot
    @zakim-robot
    Mar 05 20:01
    [caesar] I thought it's usually the surname that's marked up? Also, the problem is mainly that screen readers ignore all of these (i, em, b, strong). I'm personally not aware of any particularly good solution, unfortunately, but would be interested to hear how others solve this.
  4. [fstorr] This is one of these things where I read the specs for each element and then spend hours wondering if I’ve used the correct element. I’m certain that <em> isn’t correct. The <i> element could be a good choice, I think. The <strong> element (https://www.w3.org/TR/html51/textlevel-semantics.html#the-strong-element) is interesting as the spec defines it for use in marking up "strong importance, seriousness, or urgency for its contents”. That said, Example 5 in the spec shows a <figcaption> element with <strong> used to (in my opinion) to make the text "Ant colony dynamics” stand out. It’s not clear to me how that text is strongly important, serious, or urgent. That example, I think, works with your question, but I’m not sure it’s the best choice. I think I’d go with <i>.
  5. zakim-robot
    @zakim-robot
    Mar 05 20:11
    [fstorr] @caesar you can search for bold and italic text in “desktop” VoiceOver: pressing CMD+Option+B does bold and CMD+Option+I does italics. I’m not sure what other assistive technology support these is; a quick look at JAWS and NVDA commands suggests it’s not supported.
  6. [caesar] Good to know. Will VO read them in the course of a "normal" read-through though? (I.e. without specifically searching for marked-up text)
  7. zakim-robot
    @zakim-robot
    Mar 05 20:41
    [fstorr] Do you mean “does it change the way it speaks or announce them as bold or italic as it works its way through some text”? If so, then no. Also: it picks up text styled with CSS. This test picked up all three italicized and all three bolded items: 
      <li><i>i element</i></li>   <li><em>em element</em></li>   <li><span style="font-style:italic">css italic style on a span</span></li>   <li><b>b element</b></li>   <li><strong>strong element</strong></li>   <li><span style="font-weight:bold">css bold style on a span</span></li> </ul>
  8. [sophieschoice_slack] @fstorr I totally have the same! I literally was going back and forth between the different definitions, going like: is that going to be the correct choice indeed?
  9. zakim-robot
    @zakim-robot
    Mar 05 20:46
    [sophieschoice_slack] @fstorr and interesting that screenreaders don't alter their way of speaking
  10. [sophieschoice_slack] if I am not mistaking, they used to do that though?
  11. [fstorr] @sophieschoice_slack you don’t want to know how many hours I’ve wasted reading and re-reading the spec on the <dl> element!
  12. [sophieschoice_slack] haha! I can sympathize ;)
  13. zakim-robot
    @zakim-robot
    Mar 05 20:52
    [fstorr] @sophieschoice_slack I’m not sure they ever have, but I don’t have an in-depth knowledge of the history of screen readers. I’d assume that it wouldn’t be functionality that was removed as it strikes me as useful. Screen readers can change how they announce text (example: typing capital letters in a text input) but for some reason that functionality hasn’t been expanded to cover the pronunciation of words. I suspect it’s one of those problems that gets really tricky really quickly: how should you emphasize <strong>? Does the voice get louder? Does the intonation change? Both of those? None of those?