Re: question about bold tag

At 08:14 AM 9/17/2000 -0500, John Allred wrote:
>The BOLD tag is not deprecated, so if you want to use it, it won't
>"break" at a later point. However, <B> and <I> are considered
>"presentational" elements. As such, they will render for visual
>browsers, but provide no assistance to users with non-visual browsers.

         Hmmmm . . . I guess my reply somewhat anticipated future 
deprecation ==> removal.  Probably unwarranted, but HTML is getting smaller 
in some ways.  (The first person to call it Orwellian gets a prize, eh?)

>The WAI, at http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT-TECHS/#text-emphasis ,
>recommends the use of <STRONG> and <EM>, instead, since they are
>"structural" elements. This means that they are interpreted as having a
>purpose. For instance, if a blind user is browsing a page using a text
>to speech application, <B> or <I> will be passed over. The user will
>never know the text was bolded or italicized. But if you use <STRONG> or
><EM>, the agent will interpret the emphasis and change either the volume
>or inflection of the speech to indicate that the formatted text has
>emphasis applied.
>
>Once again, this is your choice, but if you are concerned with
>accessibility (which also includes intelligibility), then you might want
>to change <B>s to <STRONG>s and <I>s to <EM>s.

         Wow, that's the first salient argument I've heard for the 
structural over the presentational.  I'd not thought about it in those 
terms, John, but then also I've only skimmed the surface in terms of 
accessibility.

         Hmmmm . . . I wonder why my O'Reilly HTML book didn't make that 
point when discussing presentational versus structural elements?  Perhaps a 
nice letter is in order.  =)

         GFM
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