81 But...

If CSS if off, this looks quite terrible.

posted at 12:38 am on October 1, 2006 by Peter Brown

82 Punctuation

Isn’t it wrong to have the browser render what is essentially punctuation. I’m all for the q tag to seperate it from normal text, but why have the browser render quotation marks? why don’t we then have tags for <question>(?), <exclamation>(!), or just regular <sentences>(.)?

IMO, the browser shouldn’t render punctuation… it should be the job of the writer to add the correct punctuation and the q tag should be used only to style that text accordingly.

posted at 02:25 am on October 2, 2006 by Phoat Spyropoulos

83 Untitled

Accomodate a broken browser by breaking the ones that work?
No thanks.

posted at 06:23 pm on October 2, 2006 by Mike Mella

84 Untitled

Accomodate a broken browser by breaking the ones that work? No thanks.

But the browsers that don’t recognise <q> include JAWS and Home Page Reader so “Accomodate a broken browser” = “Accomodate users of screen readers.”

I think I’m beginning to sound like a broken record.

The technique described in the article works with screen readers. The <q> tag as described in the HTML 4 spec does not. Therefore, from an accessibility point of view, Firefox and Opera are broken.

posted at 09:35 pm on October 3, 2006 by Jim O'Donnell

85 Article Snapshot

I noticed that the Snapshot to this article is a paragraph with the quotes around it. Shouldn’t this be a blockquote or use the q element? I found this to be fairly funny given the current article.

Jim: It looks to me like Firefox/Opera are the ones that work correctly, and that it is JAWS and Home Page Reader that are broken. You claim that the article’s technique does works even in screen readers (good), but it is a hack many people here are upset about hearing as it’s not the way the spec was supposed to be implemented. Because IE is so prevelent, we do understand the need to get that to work, as we understand the need to get screen readers to work. Finding out that the popular screen readers are just as broken should come as no surprise to us, as JAWS and Home Page Reader rely on IE. Now, it’s my believe that condtional comments to add the quotes for IE and IE derivative browsers is the best method (with web browsers styling for non-JavaScript enabled). My personal preference is for Simon Willison’s solution. Now, of course this doesn’t fit the case where JavaScript is disabled in screenreaders, as (I assume) most developers here don’t really know enough aural CSS like they do screen. Can you offer some suggestions?

posted at 07:39 pm on October 4, 2006 by Brian LePore

86 JAWS and HPR

Hi Brian, Jon Gibbins tests (discussed in an earlier comment) showed that JAWS running on Firefox ignores quote marks generated by the <q> tag too.

As Joe Clark pointed out, you don’t have to follow the HTML spec when the spec is clearly broken. I’d advise ignoring <q> and using proper punctuation to mark up quotes, or use the <q> tag and the technique in this article to remove generated quote marks in Firefox and Opera.

posted at 09:42 pm on October 4, 2006 by Jim O'Donnell

87 Aural CSS

Now, of course this doesn’t fit the case where JavaScript is disabled in screenreaders, as (I assume) most developers here don’t really know enough aural CSS like they do screen. Can you offer some suggestions?

Another of my tests (currently JAWS-only) notes that aural CSS is next to useless, with only Opera being of any interest:
Abbreviations and Screen Reader Support for CSS2 Aural Style Sheets / CSS3 Speech Module

Unfortunately, the whole implementation of <q> is ruined by a badly considered recommendation, causing browser inconsistency and leaving assistive software unsure what the heck to do.

posted at 06:52 pm on October 8, 2006 by Jon Gibbins

88 Untitled

In my opinion, the best way is to avoid Q tags altogether.

I don’t want to trust anyone else — particularly not a computer program — to decide what’s the best way to punctuate my writing. So what if Norwegians have a different way of punctuating their quotations? If someone in Norway is reading my website, it’s still an English website, so I still want it punctuated in my (English) way. If someone wrote a Norwegian website, complete with Norwegian-style punctuation, I’m sure they’d be similarly annoyed if an English browser altered it.

As for screen readers, they should be able to change their tone accordingly when they encounter a bit of text surrounded by quotation marks, just as they pause when they encounter a comma.

I wouldn’t mind using the Q tag if it was harmless. But it’s not harmless — it adds content to my content (and in an unpredictable way, too). OK, I know the spec says that we should always use Q tags, but I don’t see why we can’t carefully disobey certain things in the spec.

As far as I can tell, using quotation marks without Q tags causes no problem for anyone. Am I wrong on this?

Who actually benefits from the use of the Q tag?

posted at 05:55 am on October 9, 2006 by Callum Locke

89 IE is broeken not the W3C recommendations

I’m not sure if some of these remarks are meant to be facetious, but they need correcting just in case impressionable youth come away not getting the joke. The W3C recommendations concerning the ‘q’ element and the ‘before’ and ‘after’ pseudo selectors and the ‘content’ attribute are not the broken part. Every user-agent I’m familiar with supports those consistently except for IE. There’s all this talk of a technique like this being needed until IE 6 and IE 7 become obsolete, but they’re actually obsolete already and we still need to find a solution because they’re the most popular browsers despite their obsolescence.

I would imagine that if JAWS really doesn’t support speech styling (and I find that dubious) that it will not last long in that market. Why would anyone who needs to use the web and has visual disabilities tolerate a user-agent that doesn’t support CSS. That largely defeats the purpose of accessible user-agents.

Also there are several comments that lump quotation marks with other punctuation. However they are different which is shy the W3C recommendations treat them differently. Quotation marks are typically only one of two ways publishers display quotations. Often times quotations will be displayed as indented blocks of text when they exceed a certain number of words (e.g. 25 words). I’m not talking about a block quotation that contains paragraphs and the like but a straight text quotation that exceeds a certain number of words. This is clearly an issue of separating semantics from style. A quotation is the semantic. Whether that semantic is presented with quotations marks before and after it or whether it’s presented as an indented block is the style. Likewise in aural browsers, the quotation may be read by a different voice to indicate its a quotation. There are several semantic constructs that have perhaps less importance than a quotation that are also typically placed within quotation marks. By removing the semantic ‘q’ element and lumping that with all of the others we lose that semantic distinction.

Finally, I am surprised at how much leeway the web community gives Microsoft who is solely responsible for all of the clamor, debate and in-fighitn among web designers as they try to find solutions to this dilemma created by Microsoft. How difficult would it be to fix the “qâ€? element (for those of you who don’t do application programming, I’ll give you a hint: not very difficult at all). They’re clearly jerking us all around and we end up fighting amongst ourselves.

posted at 05:54 am on October 16, 2006 by Rob Burns

90 Yes, IE is broken, but…

Rob, none of these comments are meant to be facetious – just practical and factual.

IE is broken in terms of supporting the spec. I don’t think anyone has said otherwise. However, in my opinion, the spec should never have taken control of punctuation away from the writer.

Aural CSS never took off and support is very limited in browsers. If you find that dubious, run some tests. Screen readers don’t support CSS, browsers do. Screen readers rely on browsers for information. And JAWS is a well-featured screen reader. Aural CSS support will have very little impact on its market life. Now if browsers offered better supported and the screen readers and browsers “talked” more, that’d be great!

Incidentally, CSS2 Aural CSS is depracted in CSS3 in favour of the Speech Module, so I can’t see Aural CSS getting increased support.

How are quotation marks different to other punctuation? I don’t understand. In English, there are different rules for how quotation marks are used, where they are positioned, etc. Usage of punctuation requires human control over that punctuation, just as accessibility testing requires a human to run manual checks. How can you support that software should be in control of any kind of punctuation?

I’m not saying that the q element is worthless – it does add meaning to a document for software. But it is next to useless in practice at the moment. I hope this changes.

posted at 02:58 pm on October 16, 2006 by Jon Gibbins