[thelist] Marking up words in colours

[Lee Kowalkowski]

On 19/01/2008, r937 <rudy at r937.com> wrote:
> so clearly, the letter or group of letters is the important datum
> so, put opening and closing tags around the instances of these data
>
>   <tag>V</tag><tag>WA</tag><tag>L</tag><tag>AH</tag>
>
> here "tag" could be SPAN or whatever (but please, not FONT)
>
> the fact that the letters combine to form english words is perceived by
> recognizing/parsing the intervening white space between words
>
> it is the importance of distinguishing between letters and groups of letters
> that determines where the semantic markup takes place
>
> simple, really

Indeed, but I was thinking that's what the JavaScript should do.  I
just thought the challenge of conveying the information (including the
fact that some letters are silent) to a non-sighted user would result
in the presentation side of things being easier (there should be
enough information in the 'accessible' version to create the 'pretty'
representation).

I'm not sure SPAN can do that, as it has no semantic meaning in this
context.  But sure, a SPAN element in the middle of a word would be
accessible in an unobtrusive sense as long as it is transparent to a
screen-reader.  However, that 'accessible' version would not have the
same meaning.

As I have no idea how non-sighted people learn to read, write or
spell, I'm not sure how relevant/important that is.

-- 
Lee