Re: Bold vs Strong

David, when you said: 
"...and screen reader developers go by trying to 
make the best of what is in the real world, so tend to reinforce 
misuses, and not support minority, but correct, use."

Is there a proposal or recommendation or discussion somewhere on how 
screen reader developers should better support the correct use? 
Does the "correct use" suggest that <b> and <strong> should be supported - 
as in rendered - *differently* by screen readers? 
I thought the issue was resolved and they were to be treated the same.  I 
understand that they *could* be visually styled differently, and some do 
that, 
but that doesn't mean they "should* be styled visually differently any 
more than they should be rendered differently by screen readers. 

and as most of us know, and Sean wrote, "other screen readers also support 
this which indicates people might not [know how] to be using the screen 
reader correctly"
___________
Regards,
Phill Jenkins
pjenkins@us.ibm.com
Senior Engineer & Accessibility Executive
IBM Research Accessibility

linkedin.com/in/philljenkins/
ibm.com/able
twitter.com/IBMAccess
ageandability.com



From:   David Woolley <forums@david-woolley.me.uk>
To:     w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Date:   08/07/2018 04:39 AM
Subject:        Re: Bold vs Strong



On 07/08/18 05:45, Phill Jenkins wrote:
> 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.

This issue is basically the result of an early aberration in HTML 
resulting in B and I being introduced as presentational markup, in what 
was otherwise a semantic markup language.  Unfortunately, they will be 
impossible to dislodge as graphic designers think in terms of 
presentation not semantics, and screen reader developers go by trying to 
make the best of what is in the real world, so tend to reinforce 
misuses, and not support minority, but correct, use.

The HTML 1.2 definitions 
<
https://www.w3.org/MarkUp/draft-ietf-iiir-html-01.txt
> are:

   B                       Boldface, where available, otherwise
                          alternative mapping allowed.

   STRONG                  Stronger emphasis, typically bold.


where it is clear that B was only intended to have presentational 
semantics.