Accessibility myths

[jadelennox]

I often see people whose goal is to be helpful and promote good, accessible design stating that one of the most important things when writing accessible HTML is to use <strong> and <em> instead of <b> and <i>. While using semantically meaningful tags is important to write semantically correct HTML, it has no effect on accessibility. In practice, no screenreaders distinguish between <strong> and <b> or <em> and <i>. Again, it's not a bad thing from a semantically correct HTML point of view, but it won't help your readers with disabilities.

I love the clearly written articles about accessibility at the WebAIM site, which talk in simple terms about not just procedures but principles. I suggest that everyone who cares about making more accessible fandom web resources take some article on that site when you have a free 5 minutes and read it. Any article that interests you. "Writing appropriate alternative text" might be particularly apropos to the questions many people have asked, because alternative text is an art, not a science.

Comments

[jackandahat]

This is good to know - I got a really condescending lecture a while back about how everyone used "strong" and "em" and it was the only reasonable thing to do if you wanted disabled people to be able to read your posts. But that was the first I'd heard of it so I did wonder.