Garrett Dimon recently wrote about ambient indicators. (His blog is great, by the way.) More specifically, he talks about how OS X deals with notifying the user of document changes on the close button (ambiently). But he also touches on how this applies to Web Design/Interaction Design:

Changing the color, typographic characteristics, or similar visual options does not reliably convey that information to all users.

This sentence lit up like a lightbulb; all these years I’d been spouting the words myself, yet somehow I managed to overlook how I apply this principle to my own work.

I recently used something like this in a menu <a class="selected" href="/">home</a>, when in reality I should have been using something like the following: <a href="/"><strong>home</strong></a>

The menu was showing changes with the selected class, but not in lynx, or on a screen reader. Using <strong> is just as easy to style, yet conveys ambient information, whereas a class does not, without a stylesheet.

This brings up a good thought. Why don’t screenreaders take in to account simple typographical information conveyed in CSS stylesheets? Do they? I don’t know; but they could and perhaps should. Especially when applied to the instance I’ve stated here. Just because I used a class instead of a <strong> element doesn’t mean I or the user should be struck on the wrist.

It just goes to show, that even the littlest nugget of information you’ve heard over and over again, can pass you by, or allude you.