Visual media again (was:: Markdown-Discuss Digest...)

[Jelks Cabaniss]

Jon Noring wrote:
(lots of good stuff snipped)

> Another issue complicating matters is accessibility, such as

> text-to-speech for the visually impaired. Here, the highlighted text

> has to be communicated by voice, and italics/bold have no meaning and

> can often be misconstrued. One would like to be able to semantically

> markup inline text so text-to-speech engines know the difference

> between linguistic emphasis and the name of a ship, for example.


It's not just for text-to-speech, it's for other "blind agents" (i.e.,
programs) too. For example search engines, which in the HTML world most of
which give higher ranking to ...

	<h1>Some Title</h1>

than to ...

	<p style="font: bold 36pt times, serif">Some Title</p>

(the latter of which I unfortunately see quite a bit in the wild).


> With minimal markup techniques it gets difficult to apply semantics to

> inline text describing what it is, and systems which try to handle

> most of the semantic variations will end up being complicated to

> apply, and interrupt the reading of the plain text. So compromise is

> necessary (such as giving up full accessibility, limiting visual

> styling of inline text, etc.) That is, one pretty much has to assume

> visual reading of the text per the conventions of the audience, and

> let the end-user figure out the semantics.


True.  Markup is as much -- if not more -- an art than it is a science.


/Jelks