I did also think a lot about these accessible tag clouds a while ago, in french for those who can read it: http://www.gasteroprod.com/comment-faire-un-tag-cloud-nuage-de-tags-ou-d-etiquettes-accessible.html
Like Ben Ward, I also chose to use EM and STRONG elements, but without nesting them. I feel it to be as improper as nesting EM with another EM.
As noted by Andy Hawkes, I am really not satisfied with an alphabeticaly ordered list, especially expressed as an accessibility improvement, because this is popularity that should be used as the ordering criterium. Having not yet figured out a simple JavaScript that could take a popularity ordered list and produce an alphabeticaly ordered one only for “visual” user agents, I still propose both lists on my page dedicated to tags: http://www.gasteroprod.com/tags/
I think there is a need (and I would be really happy to contribute) for a microformat for tagclouds, starting with John Allsopp’s work (also available here http://microformats.org/wiki/tagcloud-brainstorming) and all your comments!
Nicolas Hoizey
I did also think a lot about these accessible tag clouds a while ago, in french for those who can read it: http://www.gasteroprod.com/comment-faire-un-tag-cloud-nuage-de-tags-ou-d-etiquettes-accessible.html
Like Ben Ward, I also chose to use EM and STRONG elements, but without nesting them. I feel it to be as improper as nesting EM with another EM.
As noted by Andy Hawkes, I am really not satisfied with an alphabeticaly ordered list, especially expressed as an accessibility improvement, because this is popularity that should be used as the ordering criterium. Having not yet figured out a simple JavaScript that could take a popularity ordered list and produce an alphabeticaly ordered one only for “visual” user agents, I still propose both lists on my page dedicated to tags: http://www.gasteroprod.com/tags/
I think there is a need (and I would be really happy to contribute) for a microformat for tagclouds, starting with John Allsopp’s work (also available here http://microformats.org/wiki/tagcloud-brainstorming) and all your comments!