Currently, “bold” and “italic” markup doesn’t actually output bold and italic text (semantically); instead, it outputs strongly emphasized (<strong>) and emphasized (<em>) text. This is completely wrong and semantic markup abuse, since we can’t guarantee that bold text will only be used for strong importance or that italic text will only be used for emphasis. HTML output for this markup should be changed to general-purpose elements (i.e. *%text%* (_%text%_) should be <i>%text%</i>, not <em>%text%</em>, and **%text%** (__%text%__) should be <b>%text%</b>, not <strong>%text%</strong>).
“Strong” and “emphasis” are used for accessibility purposes.
For example, person blind since birth won’t know what “italic” looks like. But they will understand the concept of emphasizing something.
And before you reply to me: I’m talking about compliance standards designed for use throughout the Internet. I’m not just sharing my opinion on this. My opinions are irrelevant. When I work in UX, I follow the standards.
the standards are just a bunch of people’s opinions, if this post suggests something contrary to the standards, that just means it’s a discussion about the standards themselves. it is valid to point out the standards, but to consider them gospel is foolish.
No. They are tested standards, and were created based on extensive data and research.
Accessibility is about providing equivalent experiences. Presentation absolutely matters because bold, italics, etc. are used to indicate context. Markup exists to indicate context, not the other way around.
How familiar are you with ADA 508 and the latest WCAG standards?