"James D. Forrester" james@jdmf.demon.co.uk writes:
No. 'Philosophical' this point may be, but abject utilitarianism isn't a suitable method for standards design or adherence. What you propose would render the Wikipedia unusable for some people; surely this runs entirely contrary to the concept of open use that the Wikipedia aims for?
In principle, I agree with you
... but ...
In practice, non-text based HTML renderers treat <i> and <b> in exactly the same way as <em> and <strong>. So although what we're doing is bad and wrong, doing it the right way won't actually make it more accesible (and will slow load times ... ironically making it *less* accesible.)