Re: WAVE upgrade: structure icons, sound files, image maps

aloha!

len remarked, quote:
On the other hand, Gregory's CAMERA OBSCURA,  as one would expect, has 
appropriate heading, list, and emphasis tags... including real lists, not 
these paltry table formatted list poseurs.  BTW, some items are marked with 
both emphasis and strong tags... hey, nobody said you can't...
unquote

the reason for this is that some users have filters that allow for a 
voice/pitch change when italics or bold text is encountered, and for those 
things that i felt particularly important, i hedged my bets and used both 
STRONG and EM

originally, when i converted to HTML4 and CSS2, all such styling was done 
via stylesheets, but since my primary user base doesn't tend to have access 
to UAs with strong CSS support, i removed the "highly-emphasized" class 
definition from my local stylesheet (which defined highly-emphasized as 
"font-weight : bold; font-style: italic;") so as to be as backwardly 
compatible as possible...

moreover, for low vision users, italics often cause legibility problems, 
unless they are also bolded -- something, i know that an individual could 
theoretically change using a client-side stylesheet, but building a 
client-side stylesheet by hand (which is pretty much the only real option 
for a user who wants a robust and individually tailored client-side 
stylesheet) is clearly an undue burden on any user who doesn't want (or 
really need to) become fluent in the syntax and grammar of CSS (and i would 
warrant that that comprises at least 85% of all users)...

i've also had to extensively use the "title" element for links which 
contain acronyms or abbreviations, as all of the implementations of these 
elements that i've encountered only expose the content contained in the 
associated "title" attribute for ACRONYM or ABBR, despite the HTML4 spec 
explicitly stating that the "title" should only need to be defined once, 
and then should be reapplied/repropagated/reused/made available 
programmatically throughout the document by the user agent, unless the UA 
encounters a different "title" defined for an otherwise indistinguishable 
acronym or abbreviation which has a different meaning than its homonym...

the problem is that when i use a "title" to ensure that there is contextual 
info available to users when an acronym or ABBR is utilized in a hyperlink, 
some adaptive technologies (in particular, JFW) read the title defined for 
the ACRONYM or ABBR, rather than the hyperlink text, necessitating the use 
of the "title" attribute for the link...  other screen readers, such as HAL 
have problems with other inline markup contained in hyperlink text (such as 
<em> or a <span lang="xx">), which can be kludged by defining a "title" for 
the hyperlink as a whole...

gregory.

Received on Thursday, 4 May 2000 17:59:45 UTC