Re: [WSG] Avoiding the evil

[Buddy Quaid]

Usually when telling someone an address your giving it to them as information which they either have to write down or type in. The pause is usually to let them write it down before you go any further. I wonder if there is a way to make the screen reader say what you want it to say for instance if you could preface the whole address with something like "start address" and then end with "end address" then they could know that they could just copy and paste that portion wherever they wanted if they needed it. Buddy Richard Czeiger wrote: Hey Christian. Actually I find when reading an address (or telling it to someone else) I do pause after certain elements: street, suburb, state and postcode (these seem to go together for my internal voice - NSW 2011 - almost like a license plate)   Saying the whole address wihout pausing wouldn't make sense....     R     ----- Original Message ----- From: Christian Montoya To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Sent: Monday, October 10, 2005 3:38 PM Subject: Re: [WSG] Avoiding the evil <br> On 10/9/05, Richard Czeiger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: OK so someone pointed out that <pre> would be better for poetry That was me. <pre> does a nice job of handling the visual side of things but from a screen reader's point of view, how do they handle a line break through <pre> as opposed to <br />. Do they pause or say "new line"? I think, when all is said and done though that <pre> does seem better for poetry. Actually, I think I learned in poetry class that most poems are meant to be read continuously. In some poems line breaks matter, but it would be up to the screen readers to ensure that the structure of a poem was not lost to the listener. If you tried to style a poem by e.e. cummings, you would have a boatload of &nbsp; and < br />. Not pretty at all. Glad we agree. Back to the topic at hand, why would you pause when reading an address aloud? If you tell me your address, do I really care where the line breaks are? Read this aloud: 909 anystreet ithaca, new york Did you stop at the line break? Did it matter? My point is that we don't need to make the line break obvious to the screen reader. If we want it there for the browser that lacks css we would want the < br />. Sometimes line breaks are necessary visually, with or without css. Otherwise, the span{display:block;} method would work too. I would prefer the < br />. For another example of where I use < br />, I sometimes use it in forms, where I want line breaks with or without css. > PS: in terms of the <address> element itself - check out what's happening > over here! > http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/2004/02/xhtml-rdf.html#div154379976 The "resource" term looks like a great way to make an address semantic. -- - C Montoya rdpdesign.com ... liquid.rdpdesign.com ... montoya.rdpdesign.com ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************