RE: XHTML2: Elements to include and not to include (i and b)

-----Original Message-----
From: Samuli Lintula

>I care very much about disabilities and non-visual medias. Still, nothing
>in the world changes the fact that in biology (for example) <i>, not
><span class="*">, by it's visual presentation carries *information* and
>that there is no eqiuivalent to it in aural or braille media (that I know
>of).

Aural stylesheets do exist, but they aren't well supported. Hopefully they
will be soon. With them you can control the voice, pitch, volume, etc. of
any spoken text in the document.

@media aural {
  .bug-name {
    voice-family:female;
    volume:loud;
    }
  }

See more at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/aural.html because this is really
a discussion for the CSS or WAI list.

>The way I see it, is that <i> would be a *context specific* scientific
>(or non-scientific) special elelement whose presentation by convention
>is italic. This is equivalent to the usege of <sup> in XHTML2.

Instead of <i></i>, use <em class="bug-name">S. cerevisiae</em>. The <em/>
tag denotes emphasis which, in most browsers, has a default display of
italic. You can override this style of course, but this semantic meaning and
default display might be what you're looking for. I think it might work with
existing screen readers, too. Likewise, use <strong></strong> instead of
<b></b>.

cheers,
James Craig
Austin, TX

Received on Monday, 12 August 2002 23:47:01 UTC