Re: Bold vs Strong

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
>