MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Best way to do three-line space/pause, for accessibility?

bookman156 · 07-13-2022, 12:48 PM

I would normally make a space between some paragraphs in text by adding the requisite top or bottom margin to a p class. However, EPUB 3 Best Practices (ten years old) tells me this is bad for accessibility since readers for the blind (ten years ago) couldn't interpret such a margin. That book recommends instead that I use a horizontal rule, a hr tag, in which I make the width zero to dispense with the rule and then add top and bottom margin. Clever I suppose, but to me this is a bad semantic practice, since my three-line space is a pause, not a rule or a fleuron.

Some people probably still use numerous br tags, but this is a leftover from bad web design.

So my question is: Have accessibility readers improved over the past ten years so they can now 'see' such a margin on a p tag for what it is, and interpret it reliably for the blind (I have no idea, also, how they 'read' a hr tag)? Is this still a problem, or not?

How do other people approach this?

07-13-2022, 12:48 PM	#1
bookman156 Addict Posts: 368 Karma: 1000000 Join Date: Mar 2016 Device: none	Best way to do three-line space/pause, for accessibility? I would normally make a space between some paragraphs in text by adding the requisite top or bottom margin to a p class. However, EPUB 3 Best Practices (ten years old) tells me this is bad for accessibility since readers for the blind (ten years ago) couldn't interpret such a margin. That book recommends instead that I use a horizontal rule, a hr tag, in which I make the width zero to dispense with the rule and then add top and bottom margin. Clever I suppose, but to me this is a bad semantic practice, since my three-line space is a pause, not a rule or a fleuron. Some people probably still use numerous br tags, but this is a leftover from bad web design. So my question is: Have accessibility readers improved over the past ten years so they can now 'see' such a margin on a p tag for what it is, and interpret it reliably for the blind (I have no idea, also, how they 'read' a hr tag)? Is this still a problem, or not? How do other people approach this?