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

Hi Steve,

'reduced prominence' could probably work. 

But with respect to what Ian said about ’often more important’, may be 
’suppressed prominence’ could also work? The word ’suppressed’ could 
also be meaningful with regard to the fact that small text in headings 
can be suppressed from the outline. THus:

’The small element represents content with _suppressed_ prominence such 
as small print.’

Leif H Silli


Steve Faulkner, Wed, 22 May 2013 10:39:08 +0100:
> Hi leif,
> 
> ok I get your drift 'de-promote' is a bit clunky
> 
> how about
> 
> The small element represents content with reduced prominence such as small
> print.
> 
> --
> 
> Regards
> 
> SteveF
> HTML 5.1 <http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/>
> 
> 
> On 21 May 2013 19:20, Leif Halvard Silli
> <xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no>wrote:
> 
>> Steve Faulkner, Tue, 21 May 2013 14:26:17 +0100:
>>> fair enough, so how about the following
>>> 
>>> "The small element represents de-emphasised content"
>> 
>> De-emphasize can be interpreted as 'remove emphasize'. Would rather
>> support the proposal about 'de-promote/demote': "The small element
>> represents content that is de-promoted". Some words of justification:
>> 
>> * A heading is more prominent than the article it’s a heading for.
>>   But a heading isn’t, because of its prominence, ’emphasized’.
>> * Text outside <small> does no need to be emphasized, even if it
>>   is more prominent: <p>A word. <small>So small.</small></p>.
>> * A heading part set in <small> would be less prominent than the
>>   rest of that heading - but still more prominent than body text.
>> * Prominent content is what one would consider including in an
>>   abridged version or outline. Demoted content would be candidate
>>   for exclusion from a short version/outline.
>> * Prominence is not affected by <strong> or <em> (but rather by
>>   things like heading level and order of occurrence).
>> 
>>> 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
>> 
>> If HTML5 refines the definition, why couldn’t AT start to present
>> <small> differently, to signal its lowered prominence?
>> 
>> Perhaps screen readers could 'illustrate' <small> by reading its
>> content faster, so that the user can’t so easily get the details of
>> what the text without asking the screen reader software to read slower?
>> For instance, imagine that, for a piece of software, the BSD license
>> was placed inside the <small> element.  In fact, I  think video/audio
>> adverts to a degree already do read ’small print’ (such as message
>> about who approved a certain advert) that way. (However, a certain
>> contextual evaluation of what <small> means, would probably be needed.)
>> --
>> leif halvard silli

Received on Wednesday, 22 May 2013 11:11:19 UTC