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by TomaszZielinski 923 days ago
OK, now I can see that there could be e.g. a two-word brand name, where one of the words is simply bolder than the other, as a purely visual effect.

And then IMHO it would be incorrect to use <strong>.

As for the difference between <strong> and <em>, they way I understand it is:

> <strong>Hacker News</strong> is <em>the</em> site.

Basically one highlights a term (say, it could be then looked up somewhere), and the other adds spoken emphasis--in the above sentence, HN is not some site, it's THE site we talked about before.

The standard way of rendering (or priting) words with such semantic meaning is respectively bold and italics. But if you ask me it could also be underline and uppercase (respectively).

And if you render the page not to a visual medium but to sound (screen readers), then you give the screen reader a chance to treat (and read) those words differently.
1 comments
AlienRobot 923 days ago
>if you render the page not to a visual medium but to sound (screen readers), then you give the screen reader a chance to treat (and read) those words differently.

So, why couldn't they do that with <b> and <i>?

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cxr 922 days ago
> Can you say that EVERY SINGLE TIME I want bold text that will match the semantics of <strong>?
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AlienRobot 922 days ago
Good argument, ignoring what occurred in practice.

Every person with healthy vision writing a Latin language is using <strong> as bold, and most of them don't even realize it because it's hidden behind GUIs that show a B (bold) button which generates <strong> code. If you make this an issue in their tracker they will just tell you <strong> is more semantic and <b> won't be used.

Regardless of what the semantics of <strong> should have been, in practice you just made <b> with a longer name. In other words, there is no reason to use or have made <strong>, since the end result was just <b> again. Screen readers could have just done what they do with <strong> (i.e. nothing) with <b> and saved us all a lot of trouble.

I can say that almost every single time someone wants bold text now it will be a <strong> tag, even if the semantics are wrong.

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cxr 922 days ago
> In other words, there is no reason to use or have made <strong>, since the end result was just <b> again

So waitasecond, <strong> was created, airheaded developers of WYSIWYG plugins messed it up, and that retroactively means there is no reason for it to have ever been created? That's a real pretzel you're twisting.

How about: "Programmers of WYSIWYG widgets should just stop messing things up, i.e. sabotaging the efforts of the blind and other people who use/develop screenreaders—so we can finally achieve the accessibility wins that <strong> was created to solve"?

> Screen readers could have just done what they do with <strong>

No, they can't. Not in the sense of, "There's a problem that exists. We want to solve it." Your proposal is to ignore the problem and do nothing. You can apply that approach to anything. (Heck, why even have screenreaders at all? People who are blind or dyslexic are shut out from the Web? Let's just do nothing.)

> ...and saved us all a lot of trouble

Saved who a lot of trouble? What trouble?

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