Re: ACTION-24: suggest accessibility improvement for "Big issue" marker

For ACTION-24, ISSUE-26.

On Mon, 3 Dec 2007, Gregory J. Rosmaita wrote:
>
> Since the style rules defined for .issue and .big-issue are identical, 
> no one (sighted or otherwise) can determine from the styling what is 
> an "issue" and what is a "big issue"

The only real difference (other than stylistic) that the "big issues" tend 
to be newer and the "issues" tend to be older. I switched styles a few 
years ago, and never went through to covert the earlier ones. (Originally 
they were intended to be different, but that got lost at some point.)


> What would be of great assistance to the overall accessibility of the 
> HTML5 Editor's Draft would be to use semantic markers in the text of the 
> HTML5 draft, indicating inserted and deleted text,  using <INS> and <DEL>,

Is there any text that is deleted? (And is there any text that isn't 
inserted?) I'm not sure what you mean here.


> as well as considering encasing asides, ToDo, and other markers which 
> currently use visual conventions to express their function, in the EM 
> and/or STRONG elements, so that there are structural markers which are 
> capable of communicating the state of the text -- rendered visually via 
> the style sheet -- declaratively.

EM and STRONG would be inappropriate (the text is precisely _not_ 
emphasised nor important, especially in the case of "note" and "example" 
styles). What would be really appropriate is the "ASIDE" element from 
HTML5, but the spec mostly assumes it is written in HTML4.

I really would like to use the most appropriate markup possible, I just 
don't see what would be more appropriate than the current text.

If there's anything I can do e.g. by attaching an alternative style sheet
optimised for users with sight impairments, please do let me know. I'd be 
glad to do so.


> Since the style rules defined for .issue and .big-issue are identical, 
> no one (sighted or otherwise) can determine from the styling what is an 
> "issue" and what is a "big issue".  The differentiation/identification 
> of an "Issue: " and a "Big Issue: " should, therefore, appear in the 
> document source not as pseudo-text, but as actual text strings: 
> otherwise, how is one to differentiate between the two?

One isn't. I'll phase out the "issue" style over time and move everything 
to "big issue" (and then probably rename it "issue"). It just hasn't been 
a priority since the intention is to remove all of them in due course.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Monday, 3 December 2007 20:30:32 UTC