html strong em semantic accessibility screen reader

Html strong em semantic accessibility screen reader code#

So, what about semantics in HTML? All the elements in HTML do give meaning to what you want to put inside it, whether it contains navigations, or information, or maybe emphasising the content. Maybe there are a lot more reasons for semantics, so put in the comments below what you think about semantics 👇 Okay, so my point is - semantics is quite important for these aspects:

Providing the elements gives a contextual meaning, the readers, whether the technical or non-technical ones, can distinguish which part of your code needs to pay attention to when the time comes. That is why semantics is important if you really prioritise your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), so crawlers can keep their eyes on your pages and serve them to the deserving audience.Īnd of course, for developer experience, verbosity is one of the scoring points so your page can be easily maintained. I mean, meta tags), crawlers will crawl through your DOM and see what is inside your content and try to classify based on the content. Other than that, there is an entity that will crawl through your page and see what your page features. To assist these kinds of difficulties, semantics are some aspects that should be highlighted, so screen readers can recognise each element inside your HTML, and people that require accessibilities can benefit from it.

At least, that is one of definitions that I come up with throughout my years (though it is still little compared to other 'lions' in the web development industry). Screen readers and assistive technologies rely on heading tags (

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) to identify headings.
Delivering a quality web means that more and more audiences can benefit from it, whether they are visually challenged or not, or anything that makes the experience of visiting the web difficult. Technology in general, and specifically the web, is not just about doing the products, but beyond that. Is it just about you able to read the code? Let's proceed with the discussion. So, put it easy, semantics is a way to understand easily what programming syntax means, so your code will be easily read, or the right word is 'more verbose'. Semantics is the field concerned with the rigorous mathematical study of the meaning of programming languages. Then, how about in the computer science field? Semantics is the study of meaning, reference, or truth. So, what is the dictionary meaning of semantics? In other words, your sentences should make sense without emphasis those and wrappers should just offer a nice added extra for users that know they’re there.Today, let's discuss semantics. Like many tools we reach for as web designers, text-level semantics like italics and bold should be treated as a progressive enhancement. The take away here is: if you’re relying on emphasis to convey meaning you’re on dangerous ground, as some users won’t know it’s there. It’s also worth noting that the GDS Transport doesn’t have an italic/oblique variant, just Light and Bold, so emphasis (if indeed it is emphasis) doesn’t come in more than one flavour. The example they give draws attention to a reference number and an email address, so the use of the word “emphasise” is misleading the element would be more appropriate than here.

Use it to highlight critical information that users need to refer to or you’ve seen them miss. You can use bold to emphasise particular words in a transaction. The GOV.UK Design System that superseded Elements is less prescriptive, though they talk more about highlighting critical information, than semantic emphasis: In the old GOV.UK Elements, they were very clear about how bold and italics should be used in body copy:
the extra noise would mean it was quickly turned off again.

people don’t tend to change default settings.
So it can be switched on, but I doubt a high percentage of users use the feature because:

Having emphasis reported by default has been extremely unpopular with users and resulted in a lot of complaints about NVDA 2015.4 … As such, we’ve now disabled this by default, though the option is still there for those that want it Interestingly, the NVDA screen reader added support for emphasis, only to remove it following complaints by users: They can query a word, but if they don’t know there’s anything different about it, why would they query it? Whether you call them italics and bold or and, we’re talking about emphasis and the HTML used to communicate it.Ī sighted user will be able to pick out the italicised or heavier text that denote levels of emphasis, but unfortunately most non-sighted screen reader users won’t know anything about it.

Html strong em semantic accessibility screen reader code#

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