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

[jadelennox]

As long as you provide structural information, it's safe to assume that users of screen reader are familiar with variations in font presentation.

THIS. Basically, what you want to do is use structural, semantically meaningful markup. Trust the screenreaders (and the users of those screenreaders, who are responsible for the configuration) to do the right thing with that structural and semantically meaningful markup. They won't, all the time! Screen readers are imperfect tools, and they don't always react appropriately to the semantically meaningful markup. However, the tools are always improving, and the best thing you can do is trust the readers' tools to be doing what the readers want.


In other words, you don't want to be distinguishing between <cite> and <em> when you are formatting your text, avoiding using them sometimes because you don't want the emphasis to be spoken by a screenreader. Use the appropriate semantic markup, and trust that the presentation will take care of itself.

[starwatcher]

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Use the appropriate semantic markup, and trust that the presentation will take care of itself.

That's part of the problem: I'm not exactly sure what "the appropriate semantic markup" actually is.

I addressed several questions to jesse_the_k; you may like to add some opinions or further input.
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