Subject: [Xml-sg-cmt] <aside/> and accessiiblity

From: Peter Saint-Andre <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2021 10:33:03 -0600

Back in April, I promised to look into two issues with accessibility and
the <aside/> element, but it seems I never reported back on my
conversation with an accessibility expert at Mozilla.

1. The XML schema contains an <aside/> element that is transformed to an
HTML <aside/> element. Some (non-canonical) information we found online
indicated that the HTML <aside/> element can be safely ignored or
removed when a page is presented to a user. Our concern was that screen
readers and other accessibility software might elide content in the HTML
<aside/> element.

My colleague said:

###

I'm not aware of any software that would remove or skip this.  It does
become a navigational landmark, so screen reader users get notified that
it is "complementary" content and can skip to it (or over it) if they
wish. However, skipping would only happen if the user chose to do that.

###

2. The CSS stylesheet for the HTML output uses `visibility: hidden` to
style the "pilcrow" that is added to each paragraph. It seems that this
renders the pilcrow inaccessible to people using screen readers. We
talked about changing the opacity or color of the text so that it does
not create any visual distraction for sighted readers, but so that the
element remains available to those who are using accessibility technology.

My colleague said:

###

This is a tricky one.

You are correct that visibility: hidden content is also hidden for
screen reader users (and other AT). When the pilcrow is visible, it uses
the Unicode paragraph marker, which is probably as clear to screen
reader users as it is to sighted users. The concern here is that you
have to mouse over the paragraph to make this appear. That isn't
intuitive or easily discoverable for screen reader users and is
completely inaccessible to non-screen reader keyboard users.

Unfortunately, there isn't a good solution to that problem. You could
fix it by always having the pilcrow visible, but that's potentially
annoying for everyone, including screen reader users. Changing the color
or opacity removes the distraction for sighted users, but means screen
reader users see this for every paragraph, even if they don't need it.
It's a tricky tradeoff and really depends how often people are likely to
cite paragraphs. Someone else I talked with felt that citing paragraphs
was pretty common, so was leaning towards always visible for everyone.
If not always visible, you have the discoverability issue for screen
reader users. How do touch screen users make this appear? If it only
appears on hover, that's not going to work for touch, which means this
is broader than an accessibility issue.

###

HTH.

Peter

---

From: "John R Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 3 Aug 2021 12:49:41 -0400

> style the "pilcrow" that is added to each paragraph. ...

Could we provide a different stylesheet intended for AT users?  My bank 
does something like that, a different style that is easier to read and I 
think easier to screen read.

Regards,
John Levine, [email-masked], Taughannock Networks, Trumansburg NY
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly