

Implying rb for accessibility (was RE: HTML5 and ruby

From: Koji Ishii <kojiishi@gluesoft.co.jp>
Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2012 15:17:24 -0500
Message-ID: <A592E245B36A8949BDB0A302B375FB4E0D3297CB31@MAILR001.mail.lan>
> 1. do we need rb for simple ruby, or will span suffice? (take into account the use case
> related to fallback)

I went to a seminar about dyslexia in Japan today and wanted to share what I heard there.

A research for elementary and junior-high students done in 2010 indicates that 0.2% of them have difficulty to read Hiragana, and 6.9% for Kanji. Kanji dyslexia is considered that they have difficulty in visual recognition of complex drawings, and therefore adding ruby makes them even harder to read (ruby text adds more complexity.)

The researcher tried several methods to improve their readability and found that the best method was to replace Kanji with Hiragana.

To do that, we need this stylesheet in user stylesheet (or as a UA feature):

rb { display: none; }
rt { display: inline; }

We could have all textbooks to have rb if it's allowed. And the world becomes even friendlier to them if HTML5 implies rb tag when omitted.

Received on Saturday, 21 January 2012 20:20:17 UTC
