Accessibility question

[starwatcher]

I will soon be moving my fanfic to Archive of Our Own, and to a Dreamwidth fic-site. When moving the fics, I'd like to ensure that my code is accessible for screen-readers. I know some things, but have questions about others. I asked the questions in a post at my Studio, but have had no responses; apparently no one in my reading circle uses a screen-reader.

If you do, I'd appreciate it if you could drop by and educate me. Or perhaps point me toward a site that has the answers. Feel free to pass the link on to anyone who might know the answers. After I've learned what I need to know, I'll make a new post to share with my friends, and anyone else who needs or wants the information.

Thank you.

Comments

[lim]

So, the answer is to let go of what things look like, and concentrate on what things mean. q and cite are not about emphasis, they are ways to say "this sequence of words is a reference from or to another work". That could be a title of a book, or a line from a song, or a quote from a speech, or a number of other quotes or cites.

In some cases it is a judgment call, and don't get too tangled up in it. There's a reference page called Paragraphs, Lines, and Phrases, that you may find useful to check your decisions against.

In general it seems to me that you are focusing on what things look like - italicisation - but this way of communicating by manipulating typography, is purely sighted. It's not relevant to (most) users of screenreaders, just as it would not be meaningful in a radio play or a phone conversation. But these ways of conveying narratives are semantically rich, aye? So instead of thinking 'how can I make it look this way?', think 'what am I saying when I make it look like this?'.

If you can work out what you really mean, it is much easier to decide how to say it. This is as true with coding as anything else.

[starwatcher]

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In general it seems to me that you are focusing on what things look like - italicisation - but this way of communicating by manipulating typography, is purely sighted. It's not relevant to (most) users of screenreaders,

True. When I post comments, most italics means emphasis, so [em] is appropriate. But when I post fanfic, about 50% of the italics I use means spoken emphasis, but the other 50% is a convention that is useful for sighted but would be very uncomfortable to listen to if it was all emphasized. This is why I'm trying to learn a way to make italics that the screen-reader will not emphasize. It seems that [i] is given emphasis in some screen-readers, so that can't be my difference. (Although I do use it for marking the part of comment I'm responding to - as above - just in case it works.) I'll memorize the [span italics] string and use that in my fanfic and, when I'm comfortable with it, in my comment-markers.

I'm trying to be aware of both groups of readers; I want the story to sound natural (spoken emphasis only on appropriate words in dialog), while at the same time giving unemphasized italics cues (book titles, dream sequences or flashbacks) to visual readers. This discussion branched out into other areas, but I've learned a lot. I'll never develop a website, but at least I'll use what's available a little more accessibly.
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