It's a somewhat common habit at RPG.se to use bold sentences to make the appearance of a header for a section of text, rather than using our existing header formatting. This is probably because it's a common hack elsewhere on the Internet where heading formatting isn't available, and because the button in the editor for bold is more obvious than the button for a heading.
The problem
This habit causes problems though, and is so easily avoided.
The Internet in general has many visually-impaired users, and we're no exception — we know of a number of site members who have said they are visually impaired. Visually impaired users commonly use one or more of a variety of accessibility software to navigate a question and its answers, and to have the part of interest read aloud. The problem with bold sentences used to make fake headers is twofold:
- They aren't recognised as headings, so they can't be used for assisted navigation.
- They aren't read aloud as headings, making it harder to figure out what the text is supposed to mean when read aloud.
