This document:Public document·View comments·Disposition of Comments·
Nearby:Accessibility Guidelines Working Group Other specs in this tool Accessibility Guidelines Working Group's Issue tracker
Quick access to LC-2426 LC-2427 LC-2428 LC-2430 LC-2431 LC-2432 LC-2433 LC-2434 LC-2435 LC-2436 LC-2437 LC-2438 LC-2439 LC-2440 LC-2441 LC-2442 LC-2443 LC-2444 LC-2445 LC-2446 LC-2447 LC-2448 LC-2449 LC-2450 LC-2451 LC-2456 LC-2457 LC-2458 LC-2459 LC-2460 LC-2465 LC-2466 LC-2467 LC-2469 LC-2471 LC-2475 LC-2481 LC-2482 LC-2483 LC-2491 LC-2492 LC-2493 LC-2494 LC-2496 LC-2500
Previous: LC-2494 Next: LC-2493
To decipher a heading, a screen reader user will have to remember the rule: "two blank lines preceding the heading" and "a blank line following a heading". This rule can easily get complex when other formatting options are introduced in the document structure to convey the structural meaning to different user groups. What happens when a hyperlink, underlined text, or a caption is to be expressed using plain text? The list goes on when we factor in other ways documents are currently presented. It only makes sense to have its plain text counterpart elicit same structural meaning using more intuitive encodings than line breaks and non printing characters. Proposed Change: Use mnemonics instead. Remove references to non printed characters and line breaks. There are richer ways to convey this information to all user groups. For example, to express a heading in a plain text document, using (H)This is a Heading(H) will be easier to follow than the blank line format. Note that the enclosed character is a mnemonic for heading. Using the same rule, a underline can represented as (U)This is an underline(U). A hyperlink will be (HY)This is a hyperlink(HY). This way even users groups will be able to understand a plain text document by visually parsing it.