Re: Alert: accessibility and HTML Q element

to follow up on what Jason White said:

> It would be best for accessibility if Q were used widely.

How can we assess the severity of accessibility damage if Q is
wounded and on the "injured reserve," off the playing field?  For
the purposes of isolating one question, let's stipulate some
assumptions:

ASSUMPTIONS:

Let's stipulate that using Q and styles is the best all around.

Let's stipulate that under the transitional situation migrating from

	browser rarely inserts quote marks for you around Q content
  to
	browser always inserts quote marks for you around Q content

that authors largely avoid Q.

Let's assume the worst case, that they just insert literal
quotation marks in the text content of their HTML.

QUESTION:

What happens?

What I have learned so far suggests that there are the following 
negative consequences:

  Braille: Users get quotes with single quotes where double quotes
should be and vice versa.

  Speech: Some paragraphs with inline quotes have to be re-read
with punctuation on to grasp the flow.

Is that the full extent of the degradation?  Or are some pages
now simply incomprehensible?  How would you characterize the
severity of impact?

That's what I would like us to understand better.

-- Al

Received on Wednesday, 29 October 1997 13:36:37 UTC