- From: Patrick Lauke <P.H.Lauke@salford.ac.uk>
- Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 10:27:22 -0000
- To: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
> Geoff Deering > The way I read the specifications is that both SPAN and DIV > elements are > generic container elements that carry no structural meaning in > themselves, and only convey information via attributes and associated > styles. I would therefore assume that if screen readers are breaking > words that have SPAN elements within them that they have not > correctly > implemented the guidelines. Please correct me if I am wrong. Don't have an authoritive answer from the spec, but purely from a common sense point of view: if you're marking something up as being a separate span (within a word), you're creating a structural break between what is inside the span and what comes before/after. Regardless of structural meaning, you have created a structural distinction. Whether this structural distinction is "less strong" than, say, the distinction between different block level elements, or even adjacent inline elements, doesn't seem to be defined in the spec, from what I can see. To take the thought off at a tangent, what should the expected behaviour of screen readers be when faced with something like e<a href="...">x</a>ample (if we forget for a second that "x" is not a sensible link text...I just can't think of a workable example right now) Patrick ________________________________ Patrick H. Lauke Web Editor / University of Salford http://www.salford.ac.uk ________________________________ Web Standards Project (WaSP) Accessibility Task Force http://webstandards.org/ ________________________________
Received on Monday, 9 January 2006 10:27:39 UTC