**Author:** `mpt`
**Description:**
Steps to reproduce:
1. Get a screenreader to read you Wikipedia's [[Hamburg]].
(For reference, this bug uses <http://en.wikipedia.org/
w/wiki.phtml?title=Hamburg&oldid=5364113>.)
What you should hear:
"HAMBURG. (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.) (For
other uses, see Hamburg (disambiguation).) Hamburg is
Germany's second largest city (after Berlin) and its
principal port. The official name 'Freie und Hansestadt
Hamburg' recalls its membership in the mediaeval
Hanseatic League and the fact that Hamburg is a city
state and one of Germany's sixteen 'Bundesländer' ..."
What you actually hear:
"HAMBURG. (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.)
*For* *other* *uses*, *see* *Hamburg*
*(disambiguation)*. Map of Germany showing Hamburg Map
of Germany showing Hamburg Hamburg coat of arms Hamburg
coat of arms Enlarge HAMBURG [apostrophe-hamb-omega-rk]
is Germany's second largest city (after Berlin) and its
principal port. The official name *Freie* *und*
*Hansestadt* *Hamburg* recalls its membership in the
mediaeval Hanseatic League and the fact that Hamburg is
a city state and one of Germany's sixteen
*Bundesländer* ..."
Ugh. What's causing this? In order of appearance (not
necessarily order of importance):
1. '' is being interpreted as <em>. But Wikimedia projects
aren't like most other Web sites; most of our uses of
italics are for citations of works <cite>, phrases in
other languages <i lang="de">, taxonomical names <i
class="taxonomy">, or mathematical variables <var>.
Very, very few are for emphasized text. Since Wikimedia
project contributors are unlikely to care about the
distinction between <em>/<cite>/<var>/<dfn>/etc,
articles would sound more sensible if '' was
interpreted as the neutral <i>. (Possibly new syntax
for emphasis, citations, and variables could be created
for those thoughtful enough to use it.)
2. The caption for an image is rendered regardless of
whether I can see the image. When I can't see images,
captions lose their context and sound like gibberish.
Ideally, Wikimedia should auto-generate an image that
contains both the original image and the caption; that
way if the image isn't present, the caption won't be
either. (It may seem counter-intuitive to *hide* text
for accessibility reasons, but that would produce the
most sensible-sounding end result.)
3. In the image syntax, the caption text is doing double
duty as the image's alternate text. So the
out-of-context gibberish gets read not once, but twice.
4. The auto-generated enlargement icon has alt="Enlarge".
This is needlessly aggravating; if I can't view images,
a link to a larger version of an image is completely
useless. So the icon should have alt="", to hide the
link completely in text-only situations.
5. ''' is being interpreted as <strong>. But Wikimedia
projects aren't like most other Web sites; most of our
uses of bold are for defining instances <dfn>. Very,
very few are for strong emphasis. Since Wikimedia
project contributors are unlikely to care about the
distinction between <dfn>/<strong>/<b class="vector">,
articles would sound more sensible if ''' was
interpreted as the neutral <b>. (Possibly new syntax
for defining instances, strong emphasis and vector
spaces could be created for those thoughtful enough to
use it. To increase the number of people using <dfn>
correctly, the default style sheet could style
<h1>-<h6> and <dfn> with the same non-black color.)
6. Pronunciations are ordinary text, instead of being
hidden from aural user agents. (A screenreader should
just be pronouncing the term correctly in the first
place, not pronouncing it incorrectly and then bumbling
its way through clumps of IPA symbols!) This isn't as
solvable as the other problems, but a good start would
be to create markup specially for pronunciations.
Wikimedia could interpret this markup as <span
class="pronunciation">, with Wikimedia's default style
sheets containing "@media aural {.pronunciation
{display: none}}". (To remind people to use this
markup, the default style sheets could perhaps also
include {.pronuncation {background-color: inherit;
color: brown}} or similar.)
Wikimedia's accessibility is *much* better than that of
many other Web sites, because articles use logical
headings, and navigation links are left to the end of the
page. But these syntax problems really let it down. I know
they comprise more than one bug, but I'm filing this
firstly to serve as a tracker bug, and secondly to show the
cumulative effect of poor markup in a single article.
--------------------------
**Version**: unspecified
**Severity**: normal
**URL**: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Hamburg&oldid=5364113