[thelist] em, strong, b, i, css, and other letters

[aardvark]

> From: John Eckman <eckman at liquidsquid.com>
[...] 
> But are there *really* screenreaders which are capable of
> understanding <strong> and <em> which are simultaneously unable to
> understand/render in a meaningful way <i> and <b>? Which ones? What
> percentage of users using screenreaders have ones which can't
> understand <i> and <b>?

yes, but you'll have to give me some time to test it again... if i 
recall correctly, pwWebSpeak handles them differently, but it's 
beena a while since i've tested it...

> Since you can't put <em> and <strong> in a stylesheet, what are you
> supposed to do in css?

um, you can... they are tags... in fact, i always create a b/strong 
definition so they can be used interchangeably if necessary:

b, strong	{	font-weight : bold ; }
i, em		{	font-style : italic ; }

> I don't mean to start an accessibility discussion- I'm all for it- but
> this mantra has started to sound suspiciously like "recieved wisdom"
> that gets trotted out on a regular basis but may or may not be
> factual.
[...]

it has little to do with 'general wisdom,' but instead with how 
markup is supposed to work as a language... <b> imparts style 
(bold is a visual style only), <strong> imparts structure (allowing 
visual and auditory UAs to handle it as they see fit)...  same with 
i/em...