Re: [Maturity] Common HTML Entities

I didn't want this to get lost, so I am adding my two cents.

First, there is the validity of the HTML itself.

Currently, HTML can include anything. It is barely validated at all. I
understand this is the result of an industry-wide consensus, due to the
limitations on authoring and the exigencies forced upon browsers operating
in the wild.

At the other extreme of this zero to 100 conformance scale is 100% valid
HTML as per the W3C Validator. In my experience this has some use in
certain settings, but in general has been sidelined. People first check how
Google parses their pages, and often do not validate at all. I hear that
updating this validator is also resource-intensive.

Second, there is the semantic coherence of the HTML. The trend of
frameworks to write HTML in endlessly nested DIVs and SPANs, and "low code"
solutions to distance the developer from the HTML, have contributed to the
proliferation of non-semantic HTML, and the associated proliferation of
ARIA roles and labels.

So your proposal, Janina, seems to me to be proposing a validation
somewhere between the two HTML validation extremes. Not zero, and not 100%.
And it proposes a new type of validation, one that would assess a heap of
DIVs and ARIA labels as poorer than a Button.

Are you proposing a wiki page, "Common HTML entities used by Screen
Readers"?

Would that meet the need?

HTH

- Lionel






[image: Lionel Wolberger]
<https://userway.org/?utm_source=email-signature&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Lionel_Wolberger>

Lionel Wolberger
COO, UserWay Inc.
[image: UserWay.org]
<https://userway.org/?utm_source=email-signature&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Lionel_Wolberger>
[image: Phone Icon] +1 (415) 800-4557 <+14158004557>
[image: Envelope Icon]
lionel@userway.org <lionel@userway.org>
[image: Schedule with Me]
<https://userway.org/s/lionel?utm_source=email-signature&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Lionel_Wolberger>




On Wed, May 18, 2022 at 10:17 PM Janina Sajka <janina@rednote.net> wrote:

> Colleagues:
>
> During today's Maturity Model teleconference we noted the value of
> cleanly marked up HTML. I even mentioned APA Co-Chairs are considering
> whether we might want to design and adopt a cross-platform tool that
> would help us enforce certain styling--which is why I've cc'd this email
> to the APA Chairs list!
>
> I mentioned I have a bookmark that helps me when I'm editing. It's
> actually a W3C resource available here:
>
> https://www.w3.org/wiki/Common_HTML_entities_used_for_typography
>
>
> Note that this does not reference elements such as <q> and </q> for
> "smart" quotation marks.
>
> I would note further from my personal experience that sometimes simple
> CSS rules can help. In recent years I used CSS to mark quoted text in
> dark red in order to keep my colleagues from trying to edit our
> quotations! Yes, we can quote, quote less, or quote more; but we can't
> edit what we quote from another publication. One would think that would
> be obvious, so I tried to make it obvious where those quotes were.
>
> hth!
>
> Janina
>
>
> --
>
> Janina Sajka (she/her/hers)
> https://linkedin.com/in/jsajka
>
> The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
> Co-Chair, Accessible Platform Architectures     http://www.w3.org/wai/apa
>
>
>