Re: Bold vs Strong

hmm, just a note regarding this failure technique - it does *not* discuss 
Strong vs Bold  so no real guidance here. 

The failure technique does have 3 "semantic" failure examples, none of 
which say that using the element <b> instead of <strong> is a failure: 
*emphasis added*

Failure example 1: Using CSS to style the p element to look like a heading
The author intended to make a *heading* but didn't want the look of the 
default HTML heading. So they used CSS to style the P element to look like 
a heading and they called it a heading. But they failed to use the proper 
HTML heading element. Therefore, the Assistive Technology could not 
distinguish it as a heading. 
Note: In this case, the proper approach would be to use CSS to style the 
H1 element in HTML. 

Failure example 2: Images of text used as headings where the images are 
not marked up with heading tags
Chapter1.gif is an *image* of the words, "Chapter One" in a Garamond font 
sized at 20 pixels. This is a failure because at a minimum the img element 
should be enclosed within a header element. A better solution would be to 
eliminate the image and to enclose the text within a header element which 
has been styled using CSS. 

Failure example 3: Using CSS to visually emphasize a phrase or word 
without conveying that emphasis semantically
The following example fails because the information conveyed by using the 
CSS font-weight property to change to a bold font is not conveyed through 
*semantic markup* or stated explicitly in the text. 

In my opinion there is no *semantic* difference between Bold and Strong, 
it just that the term Bold and the element <b> *also* have a visual style 
meaning implied, but not guaranteed. 
In my opinion failing a website for simply using <b> instead of <strong> 
shows the lack of understanding of the success criteria, since either one 
can be styled / rendered in any way the same or differently, but 
semantically they are the same.  But I do agree that most folks writing 
HTML by hand would probably feel odd using <b> and styling it differently. 
 Its kind of a style and semantic tag wrapped up in one, where <strong> is 
perhaps not as tied or implied to have a "bold font face". 

Someone else told me something to the effect of: 
<span class="bold">Bold Text</span> is just as semantically vacuous as 
<b>Bold Text</b> or <strong>Bold Text</strong> and consumes many more 
ASCII characters in the HTML file. 
Semantically Vacuous = Syntactically different but no semantic difference. 


and regarding the comment that screen readers do *nothing different* is 
*not* exactly correct or at least current - see this update from 2010 
(only 8 years ago):
UPDATE 28/01/10
A tweet by Dan Clark points out that JAWS has a document proofreading 
scheme called Proofreading (attributes), using this scheme italicized, 
stricken and bolded text is indicated by a change in voice, but there is 
no distinction between <em> or <i> and <strong> or <b>. He also mentions 
that JAWS schemes can be accessed via a dialog using the INS+ALT+S key 
combination.

Until HTML deprecates <b>, it should be treated the same as <strong>, 
because both elements have semantic meaning, regardless of their visual 
style.
and in my opinion, this has been a silly debate that has been wasting time 
and energy when there are definitely more important things to debate. 

I do suggest that [no semantic difference] needs to be "documented" in one 
of the techniques to end the debate and educate us all.
___________
Regards,
Phill Jenkins




From:   Vinil Peter <vinilpeter.wcag@gmail.com>
To:     Katie Haritos-Shea <ryladog@gmail.com>
Cc:     WAI Interest Group <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Date:   08/05/2018 03:23 PM
Subject:        Re: Bold vs Strong



Hi Katie,

Thanks for the information and guidance.

Regards,
Vinil Peter, PMP
On Aug 5, 2018, at 11:09 PM, Katie Haritos-Shea <ryladog@gmail.com> wrote:
Vinil, 

Please see WCAG 2 failure technique as rationale for using semantic 
markup:  https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/F2.html 
F2: Failure of Success Criterion 1.3.1 due to using changes in text 
presentation to convey information without using the appropriate markup or 
text

On Sun, Aug 5, 2018, 11:17 AM Vinil Peter < vinilpeter.wcag@gmail.com> 
wrote: 
Dear colleagues, 

I have been asked to provide my thoughts on a debate on the use of bold 
<b> and strong <strong> for one of my clients. The client's internal 
accessibility testing team marked all the instances where <b> was used as 
errors and recommended to change them to <strong> so that screen readers 
read out the text with added emphasis. This has brought their quality and 
compliance scores down drastically. The client's developers are unhappy 
about this and claim that they should not be marked down as there is no 
clear guideline or fine print that mandates use of <strong> over <b>. 
Moreover, W3C has not deprecated <b> yet and it's usage is still 
permitted. <b> has been in use since ages and asking to replace all bold 
text with strong is like declaring that  use of <b> should be banned 
henceforth. 

I am planning to give my recommendation to use <strong> in headers or 
functionality names etc. if the text is bold as per  design, while it is 
still fair to allow use of <b> for other bold text. The 'appropriate 
usage' of bold or strong is finally the designer's call as there is no 
clear guideline. 

Is my recommendation correct or am I missing something? What your thoughts 
and have you come across any such debate? 

Regards, 
Vinil Peter, PMP