Re: [RESEND] suggestion: modify <small> definition

fair enough, so how about the following

"The small element represents de-emphasised content"

On the topic of users who don't get the effect of smaller text:

To my knowledge <small> is the same as <span> for screen reader users, so
in a sense they are advantaged as the visual de-emphasis is not apparent

--

Regards

SteveF
HTML 5.1 <http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/>


On 21 May 2013 13:57, Patrick H. Lauke <redux@splintered.co.uk> wrote:

> On 21/05/2013 13:34, Steve Faulkner wrote:
>
>> I think the definition is trying to dissociate the two. Author intent =
>> make appear less important by making smaller (less prominent). The
>> definition attempts to rectify this by saying that despite it being
>> smaller it is of no less (potential) importance to the user.
>>
>
> If the author's intent IS in fact to make it less important, then HTML
> should honour the author's intent. As I said before, author intent and
> audience intent may often differ, and HTML should heed the former.
>
> Otherwise, if the spec explicitly said that <small> is of no less
> importance / doesn't de-emphasise the text, why would authors actually use
> it? Just to achieve smaller default rendering? Why not just use a span with
> font-size: 0.7em or something?
>
> In short, I believe that the reason why authors (be it advertisers or
> similar) use <small> is the same reason they use small print in printed
> material, tv advertising, etc: to de-emphasise something, either because
> it's worded in a very non-sexy way (legalese that they are obliged to
> include, in a particular form, but that does not fit in with the style
> they're trying to convey), is too wordy (I'm reminded of the audio
> equivalent in radio advertising where they read out the small print very
> fast), or because they in fact want to deceive the unwary ("our payday
> loans have approx 500% APR equivalent interest"). As such, the language
> definition should reflect this intended use of de-emphasising. Otherwise,
> it seems unbalanced that visual users will have it visually de-emphasised
> while, say, screenreader users may not.
>
> Will readers/users want to actually place importance on content marked as
> <small> ? Certainly, but the same way that visual users will have to pay
> attention to something that's visually smaller than the rest ("read the
> small print"), the same way non-visual users will have to explicitly go
> over something that's been nominally marked as "oh that? that's really
> nothing too important, move along".
>
> Or, put another way: the ethics of using small print / <small> to actually
> mark up important stuff is a completely separate issue ... one which simply
> changing the definition in the spec won't solve, IMHO.
>
>
> P
> --
> Patrick H. Lauke
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