Re: Empty <P> Tags For Spacing

>A screen reader (SR) announcing "blank" when it hits an empty P is
entirely correct. Indeed it is the job of the SR to announce HTML, whether
it is good or bad, although if it is bad it may make mistakes or be unable
to announce it*

I would say it is the SR's job to turn a visually understood medium into an
auditorily understood medium, in translating from one medium to another it
sometimes makes sense to get rid of something that makes sense in the
source media, but not in the target media.

True it would be nice if people did not make blank paragraphs, but they
evidently do, and it would be nice if CMS's did not make blank paragraphs,
but this also seems to be something that can happen for reasons that are
probably very bad.

 That the SR turns that into a 'blank' is, imho, just as bad as creating an
empty paragraph because while an empty paragraph may have some visual use,
despite being poor markup, it has no auditory use at all.
The SR by being too literal is a bad translator.

Also of course we could create scenarios where the word blank could change
the meaning of the rest of the text being read.







On Tue, Feb 8, 2022 at 7:14 PM Bristow, Alan <Alan.Bristow@elections.ca>
wrote:

> A screen reader (SR) announcing "blank" when it hits an empty P is
> entirely correct. Indeed it is the job of the SR to announce HTML,
> whether it is good or bad, although if it is bad it may make mistakes or be
> unable to announce it* (*principle reason why HTML should be well formed).
>
>
> It is the HTML author's job to code valid HTML and so not include empty P
> tags.
>
>
> As it stands if I am a sight-impaired coder using a SR and I want the SR
> to help me identify if my CMS is inserting bad markup by leaving empty P
> tags, then all is good, since it does announce these and I can fix that.
>
>
> If content authors wish visual space, and an empty P tag (or empty any
> tag) is used for the purposes of adjusting visual spacing, then those
> content authors need to read up on CSS and the "...separation of structure
> (or: content) from presentation".
>
> https://www.w3.org/standards/webdesign/htmlcss#whatcss​
>
>
> Alan
>
>
> -Alan Bristow
> Web Programmer
> Elections Canada
> alan.bristow@elections.ca
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Lucy GRECO <lgreco@berkeley.edu>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, February 8, 2022 12:35 PM
> *To:* Guy Hickling
> *Cc:* WAI Interest Group discussion list
> *Subject:* Re: Empty <P> Tags For Spacing
>
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>
> If the screen reader does not pronounce blank for an empty p tag what is
> it supposed to do when it hits on that empty space blank is the best thing
> for it to announce
>
> On Tue, Feb 8, 2022, 9:32 AM Guy Hickling <guy.hickling@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> A couple of comments here have said that screen readers should not
>> announce "blank" for empty paragraphs (which I see on websites in some
>> screen readers, as well as in Pdf documents).
>>
>> But this is the kind of problem that arises when we create bad markup.
>> Basically, any wrong or non-standard or questionable HTML is likely to
>> cause assistive devices to produce poor quality results, as in this case.
>>
>> What a screen reader does is not in our control - and in any case they
>> are unlikely to change very quickly just because we criticise them here!
>> But creating good HTML markup is in our control. Rather than pushing the
>> responsibility for doing right onto others, we should put our own house in
>> order first!
>>
>> So to get back to the question, I would advise against empty elements as
>> best practice, but it isn't a WCAG matter.
>>
>>