Robert A. Rosenberg wrote:
The use of <em> and <strong> in lieu of <i> and <b> is aimed NOT at the visual presentation (ignoring screwing with the em->i and strong->b mappings via CSS) but at AUDIO (ie: Screen Reader) presentation.
I would respectfully disagree. Whereas <b> and <i> were targetted specifically at visual rendering (since they denote "bold" and "italic", which are not inherently meaningful for other media), <em> and <strong> are targetted at /all/ forms of rendering, since "emphasised" and "strongly emphasised" are media-neutral. They do, of course, work well with audio renderers but equally well with visual renderers. This is, I believe, an important point, because if it is not stressed, those writing for purely visual media may still perceive no need to use <em> and <strong>; it would have the unfortunate effect of relegating them to second-class citizens in the markup world, whereas in fact it is <i> and <b> (and their ilk) that need to be relegated, then deprecated, and finally forgotten.
Of course, the text-to-speech mapping could in theory treat i the same way as it treats em,
Yes, it /could/; but it would be guessing in the dark. There is no way to know whether an author who wrote <i>Felix domesticus<i> or <i>τέλος</i> intended them to be emphasised or not from the markup alone. Philip Taylor ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [css-d@lists.css-discuss.org] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
