Re: About 'inline special blocks'

[Tim Cross]

Max Nikulin <manikulin@gmail.com> writes:

> On 19/06/2022 19:47, Juan Manuel Macías wrote:
> Concerning <name> vs. <span class="name">, is it the same for assistive
> technologies like screen readers to add <strong>text</strong> (or <b>text</b>)
> and <span class="strong">text</span> with "font-weight: bolder;" in CSS?

First, never use <b></b> or <it></it>, only use semantic tags for
accessibility. 

The question unfortunately has a complicated answer. Basically, <div>
and <span> are the two tags which have no semantic meaning. So, from an
accessibility perspective, they don't convey anything. They are
basically a presentation layout tgag. 

However, this is not a bad thing, but rather a very good thing. This
touches on the area where far too many people get accessibility wrong.
It is like the very misguided rule which says all images must have an
alt tag. The key point to consider is whether what your communicating
via layout has any real use for someone using a screen reader. Consider
something like 

#+being_src
<section aria-label="section label">
    <h3>Section Title</h3>
    <section class="fancy-css-class">
      <section class="some-css-class">
         Some Content wrapped within multiple section elements.
       </section>
      </section>
     ...
</section>
#+end_src

The inner <section> is being used to avoid using a <div> in the mistaken
belief that using a <div> (or <span>) would be bad for accessibility.
Unfortunately, the above wil often result in the screen reader reading
out "Seciton section section SOme content" (some screen readers would
ignore the inner section as it has no aria tag). 

Same sort of problem occurred with the rule about images must have an
'alt' tag. I cannot count the number of pages I visit where the screen
reader says "logo logo filler righ pad left pad filler logo brand". 

So, the span tag is great for accessibility when what the author is
trying to convey is layout information or styling information which is
of no use to blind or VI users. Often such style emphasis is used to
assist sighted users who can quickly scan the page. Blind and VI users
cannot scan in the same way. What is more important for us is the
ability to get an overview of the semantic content of the page -
sections, table, lists etc. 

Sadly, org isn't great from an accessibility perspective. This is
something I would like to see improved, but it is a huge and complex
task. There are some 'easy' winds we could try. For example, org still
defaults to using the <b></b> and <i></i> tags instead of
<strong></strong> and <em></em>. Likewise, we should move to html5 as
the default, not xhtml, but last time I raised that, there was
considerable push back to stick with xhtml. We also need complete
overhaul of the use of aria tags and numerous other areas. As I said, a
very large job which is complex and extremely time consuming. 

Sadly, I'm not sure there is a lot we can do with accessibility and PDFs
in org mode. This is the one area where TeX/LaTeX does a poor job. Last
time I looked, there was considerable discussion about what to do from
an accessibility standpoint in the TeX community, but seemed to be
little or very slow progress (not a criticism of the efforts of members
of that community, but rather a reflection of how complicated this stuff
is).